Cultural English 477 - American Indian Movement; Sears Tower; Q&A

Complete Transcript

You’re listening to ESL Podcast’s English Café number 477.

This is English as a Second Language Podcast’s English Café episode 477. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

On this Café, we’re going to talk about a political organization called the American Indian Movement, or AIM (AIM). We’re also going to talk about one of the most famous buildings in the city of Chicago, which is one of the largest cities in the U.S. The building is called the Sears Tower. And, as always, we’ll answer a few of your questions. Let’s get started.

We begin this Café by going back about 40 years, to the 1970s, in order to talk about a famous political group active at that time called the American Indian Movement. American Indians are also sometimes known as “Native Americans.” These are the peoples who were here in what is now called North America before the European settlers. The Europeans came over – well, it depends on who you talk to, which year they came over, but in American textbooks, traditionally the first European to arrive in what was then called the New World was Christopher Columbus.

Columbus was actually trying to get to the country of India, and so when he arrived in the Americas, he thought the people there were Indian – as in the country of India. Nowadays, we don’t usually use the single word “Indian” to refer to the descendants – the people who came from the peoples who were here before the Europeans. We call them either “American Indians” or “Native Americans.” As you probably know, the United States doesn’t have a very happy relationship – or hasn’t, historically – with the Native American people.

In the 1800s – in the nineteenth century – when the United States was growing, people began to move to the western part of the U.S. and, of course, there were people living there already: the Native Americans. So, they moved, killed, or relocated these people to other areas. “To relocate” (relocate) means to move someone from where they are living now to another place permanently. “Relocations” can be voluntary – you can agree to move to a different place – or they can be “involuntary,” not voluntary. You don’t want to, but you have to because you are told to.

The Native Americans eventually lost most of their land. They were instead relocated to areas that the U.S. government set up, called “reservations.” A “reservation” (reservation) here refers to a piece of land that the United States government set up or determined for the Native Americans to live on. The word “reservation” has other meanings in English as well. We can talk about a “restaurant reservation,” which is sort of like an appointment that you have, or an agreement to do something in the future. Here, we’re talking about “reservation” as a piece of land.

Now, these reservations that the U.S. government established were not always in very good areas. Many of them did not have good areas for farming or hunting animals, which is what the Native American tribes, or groups, were used to. In addition to moving to reservations, the children of the Native Americans were often taken from their families and educated in schools to learn about the American culture – that is, the European-American culture. This was often criticized by the Native Americans as being a way of basically destroying their culture and their people.

Native Americans remained at a significant disadvantage – that is, they were less economically successful, especially than the average American, right up through the twentieth century. During the middle part of the twentieth century, however, many of the minority groups in the United States – the nonwhite groups – began to ask for and demand their civil rights. Thus began the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century.

“Civil (civil) rights” are rights that you should have by law, that you are entitled to, that the government should protect for you. The right to vote, for example, the right to work –these could all be considered civil rights – the right not to be discriminated against because of your skin color or your ethnic background. The civil rights movement, then, is a description of a number of different organizations that were trying to get more civil rights – more freedom, less discrimination – for the African-American or black community, but also for other groups, including the Native-American community.

The most famous civil rights advocate of the twentieth century was Martin Luther King – Martin Luther King Jr., technically, or if you want to be completely correct, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., because King was a minister – a leader of a religious group – and religious groups were very important in the civil rights movement. The Native American community had its own civil rights organization. It was started in the 1970s by five Native American men. The organization was called the American Indian Movement.

The American Indian Movement, or AIM, specialized in fighting for the civil rights of American Indians. “To specialize” (specialize) means to focus or to concentrate on a specific area or topic. The original purpose of AIM was to help Native Americans who had lost their homes on the reservations. However, as the organization grew, it began to change its focus to try to seek more economic independence from the U.S. government – to try to get Native Americans to have their own businesses, their own jobs, and not have to rely on or depend on the U.S. government to give them the things they needed.

They also wanted control of land, some land that was taken from the Native Americans as the U.S. government relocated them onto reservations. Like a lot of organizations in the 1960s and 70s, especially those that were trying to create social and political changes in the country, there were some groups that dedicated themselves to or believed it was necessary to use violence in order to get what they wanted. This happened not just in the U.S., of course, but in many different countries during this period. It still happens today.

In the 1970s, AIM decided to do something dramatic in order to get more attention, more publicity – more news stories about its movement, its organization. So, in 1969, members of the group occupied something called Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. Now, Alcatraz Island is famous in the U.S. for being a prison. It was considered a prison that you couldn’t escape from because it was an island, and it would’ve been very difficult to leave the island and swim to safety – to swim to freedom. Alcatraz was a place where some of the most violent, serious criminals were punished.

Eventually Alcatraz Island was abandoned – it was no longer used as a prison – and it was during this period that the American Indian Movement decided to occupy the island. “To occupy” (occupy) means to take control of some area. That word has become quite common now in protest groups around the world. AIM occupied Alcatraz for almost two years, from 1969 to 1971. The government finally decided to make Alcatraz into a park, but the Native Americans wanted the former prison island returned to them. They said it belonged to the Native American people.

They hoped to make Alcatraz a place where people could learn about Native-American cultures. Over 400 people went to Alcatraz as part of this occupation. Many of these people were members of the American Indian Movement. Eventually, however, the people were removed by the government. No one was hurt or killed or injured, but it was a very successful way of getting publicity, getting the news media to talk about the American Indian Movement. I remember reading about it as a child.

There’s another reason I remember it well – because some of the actions of the American Indian Movement took place very near where I grew up in Minnesota. In 1972, the American Indian Movement occupied a federal, or national, building: the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. This government organization was responsible for running the reservations, or at least for maintaining a good relationship with the Native Americans who ran the reservations.

AIM occupied the Bureau’s building because it thought the government, the U.S. government, was not following its own laws. The group gave then-President Nixon a list of 20 things that they wanted the government to do for the Native American people. Once again, the occupation of the Bureau of Indian affairs ended peacefully – no one was hurt or killed – but the American Indian Movement wasn’t done yet.

In February of 1973, 200 members of AIM took over a small town called Wounded Knee. Wounded Knee is a town located in the state of South Dakota. Now, South Dakota is located in the Midwest, or upper Midwestern region of the U.S. It’s next to the state of Minnesota, and there are several American Indian reservations in Minnesota and South Dakota.

Why did AIM decide to occupy this particular town? Well, Wounded Knee was a very important place in the history of the American Indian peoples. Wounded Knee was where a very famous battle was fought between the Native Americans and the U.S. Army back in the end of the nineteenth century, back in 1890. During this battle, the U.S. Army was said to have killed 200 men, women, and children who were members of one of the Indian tribes, or groups, called in English the “Sioux.”

The Battle of Wounded Knee was sometimes considered the last battle between the U.S. Army and the Native Americans. So, in 1973, AIM occupied this small town of Wounded Knee as a reminder, in a way, of what the American government had done to the Native American tribes during the nineteenth century. Leaders of AIM made demands on the U.S. government, just as they had done when they occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs. “Demands” (demands) are things that you want, things that you say have to happen in order for you to, in this case, stop the occupation of Wounded Knee.

The U.S. government, however, wasn’t very happy with this occupation and wasn’t very interested in meeting the demands, or giving the American Indians what they wanted. Instead, they surrounded the town of Wounded Knee with federal agents. “To surround” (surround) means to close someone in, to block someone in at all sides so that they can’t leave or escape. Federal agents are basically policemen and policewomen who work for the national, or federal, government.

For two months, the two groups – the U.S. government and the leaders of AIM – tried to come to an agreement. However, they could not, and eventually in May of 1973, there were bullets that were shot – guns that were fired between the two groups. Two Native Americans were killed, and one federal agent was very badly hurt. The leaders of AIM were arrested and some of them went to jail.

Two years after Wounded Knee, in 1975, two more federal agents were killed, this time on a reservation – a different reservation – called the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Two years later, in 1977, the police arrested one of the leaders AIM Lenard Peltier, for this murder (or these murders, since there were two men who were killed). He was found guilty and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. “Consecutive” (consecutive) means one right after the other.

Well, of course, you only have one life, so when you’re sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, you probably are going to be imprisoned for the rest of your life. You will probably die in prison. Now, some people thought that Lenard Peltier did not get a fair trial – that the government did not treat him properly. They believed that the FBI – which is the government agency involved in the case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation – did illegal things like threaten people who were involved in the legal case.

“To threaten” (threaten) means for one person to say that he will hurt you if you do something that he doesn’t like. Some people say the FBI agents threatened certain members of the Pine Ridge Indian tribe and that therefore Peltier didn’t get a fair trial ¬– that the legal process that was used for Peltier was not correct. Some people still say that Peltier was innocent. Some members of the American Indian Movement continued to talk about the case of Lenard Peltier.

Others say that he was tried fairly and should remain in prison. In prison, in fact, is where he is now as we record this episode – still – and he’ll probably remain there, again perhaps until the end of his life.

Our next topic is one of the tallest buildings in the United States (at one time, it was the tallest building in the U.S.) the Sears Tower. The Sears Tower is one of the most famous buildings in the city of Chicago, Illinois, which is located in the mid-western part of the U.S. It was completed back in 1974. I remember when the building was completed. It was considered a very big news story. Everyone was talking about it.

The Sears Tower was built and paid for by a large chain of stores called Sears Roebuck and Company. There are still lots of stores owned by Sears in the United States. The Sears Tower was built for the company to put their offices in. Of course, it’s no longer the tallest building in the world as it was when it was first built, but it’s still pretty impressive. The building is 1450 feet tall – that would be 442 meters for the rest of you.

The height does not include the antennas on the top of the building, however. An “antenna” (antenna) is a pole or wire that is used to send and receive radio signals. The outside of the building is covered in a black aluminum, a black metal. The entire building has 110 floors. We use the word “floor” here to mean level. There are 110 floors in the Sears Tower. You can go up to almost the top – to the 103rd floor, to something called a “sky deck.” A sky deck is a place where you can look out and see all the area around you – in this case, the city of Chicago and the area surrounding the city of Chicago.

In 1994, Sears sold the building to another company. The building was then sold a few years later to another company, and then to another company again a few years after that. I believe officially they decided to change the name of the building to one of the larger tenants of the building. A “tenant” (tenant) is a person or organization that rents space from you. One of the tenants is called the Willis Group Holdings Company. They were, I believe, officially going to change the name of the tower to the Willis Tower.

However, most people in the U.S. would not know what you were talking about if you said “the Willis Tower.” Everyone knows it still as the Sears Tower. The Sears Tower cost $150 million to build. Until 1996, it was the tallest tower in the world. However, other buildings, including one in Malaysia, were built that were taller, and the Sears Tower is no longer the largest or tallest building in the world. But if you go to Chicago, you should definitely go up to the observation deck, or floor where you can see the whole region around the city of Chicago. It’s quite interesting.

Now let’s answer some of the questions you have sent to us. Our first question comes from Vladimir (Vladimir) in Brazil. Vladimir wants to know the meanings of three words: “inception,” “conception,” and “begotten.”

Let’s start with “inception” (inception). The noun “inception” refers to an action or a moment that something begins. This podcast’s inception was in the year 2005. That’s when it began. We often use “inception” in the business world to talk about when a company was founded or started. It can also be used to talk about when a project or task began.

“Conception” (conception) has a couple of different meanings. One of them is related to “inception.” “Conception” can also mean the start or creation of something, but not a company really. If we use “conception” in this sense, we’re talking about an idea. Another word for “idea” is “concept” (concept). So, “conception” can be used to talk about when you thought of a certain idea first – when it first came into your mind. The verb would be “to conceive” (conceive).

“Conception” can also be used in a biological sense for when a baby begins to grow inside the womb or the uterus of a woman. “Conception” refers to the beginning, then, of the human life. It’s when a woman gets pregnant. In fact, we use that same verb, “to conceive,” when we talk about a woman who has become pregnant. We could say she has “conceived” a child.

The third word is “begotten” (begotten). “Begotten” is actually the past participle of the verb “to beget” (beget). “To beget” means to be the father of a child – to get a woman pregnant, you might say – and if you don’t know how that happens, ask your parents or somebody else. Maybe a doctor.

“Begotten” is not a very common word in either conversational or written English. It’s a kind of word that you might see in an old book or an old text. You might see it, for example, in the Christian Bible where we talk about someone begetting someone else – someone having children, a man fathering a child.

You could also use the verb “to beget” in a more metaphorical sense to mean to bring about or to give rise to, to create. There’s an old expression, “Success begets success” – if you’re successful, that will create more opportunities for you to be even more successful. Once again, neither the verb “to beget” nor the past participle “begotten” is very common in conversational English anymore.

Cristina (Cristina) in Colombia wants to know the meaning of the phrasal verb “to get back.” “To get back” has a couple of different meanings. One meaning is to recover or to find something that has been lost or that has been taken from you. If your cat jumps out of the window of your house and goes somewhere else, many people (not me) would want to get the cat back. “To get someone back” means to return that person – or in this case, that animal – to you.

You could also use this phrasal verb when you loan something to someone else. You give someone 20 dollars as a loan, and you want the person to pay you back. That’s another possible phrasal verb in this situation. You could also say you want “to get back” your 20 dollars. Or you could loan someone your computer, and later you want to get it back; you want it to be returned to you.

“To get back to” something means to return to a place. “I need to get back to Venice Beach.” I haven’t been there in a long time and I want to return there. You can get back to a person. Someone calls you on the phone. You can say, “Well, let me get back to you,” meaning let me call you or communicate with you later. That would be to get back to someone or some place.

There’s also an expression “to get back at” someone. “To get back at” someone is quite different. It means to get revenge – to do something bad to someone who has done something bad to you. “The girl got back at her ex-boyfriend by putting paint on his car.” I don’t recommend that, of course. You don’t want to be getting back at people because then they want to get back at you, and it never stops. So just forget and move on.

We move on to Fernando (Fernando), also in Brazil. Fernando wants to know the meaning of an expression “cash on the barrelhead.” This is not a common expression, but you will hear it sometimes, so let’s talk about it.

“Cash” (cash) means money, especially dollar bills or 100-dollar bills. I like 100-dollar bills better than dollar bills. Cash is paper money and coins, basically. We distinguish cash from, say, a credit card or a check (a piece of paper that is basically a promise to give this person money from your bank account). Cash is paper money and coins.

A “barrel” (barrel) is a container with round sides on it and a flat top and bottom. Usually we use barrels to carry liquid. You could talk about a “beer barrel” – a barrel, a large container, full of beer. The top of the barrel is called the “barrelhead.”

“Cash on the barrelhead” means money that is paid immediately when something is bought – when you have to pay right away. You can’t wait a few days or a few weeks. “I don’t accept credit cards. I will only sell you this cash on the barrelhead,” meaning you have to actually give me paper money and coins in order to buy this thing, and you have to pay me right away, immediately.

Some people think this expression comes from the old days when barrels – empty barrels – were used as seats and tables in bar, a place that serves alcoholic drinks. Customers were required to pay for their drinks immediately by putting their cash on the barrelhead which served as a sort of table. That’s one possible reason why we use this expression, or where this expression came from, I should say.

From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan. Thank you for listening. Come back and listen to us again, here on the English Cafe.

Glossary

to relocate – to move someone or something to a different place permanently; to move one’s home to another place

* When Hans got a job in Paris, he had to relocate from his home in Berlin.

reservation – a piece of land set aside by the U.S. government for Native Americans to live on

* Visitors to Arizona and New Mexico can visit reservations where Native Americans still live and learn about traditional ways of life.

Civil Rights Movement – an organized effort in the 1950s to 1970s that worked to change laws to ensure equal rights, opportunities, and treatment by the government and the legal system for all Americans

* In the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. promoted peaceful protests, because he did not believe that using violence to fight violence worked.

specialized – concentrating on a specific topic or area; having expert knowledge in one area or field

* Even though Dr. Soto is a licensed general veterinarian, he specialized in large animals, such as horses and cows.

to occupy – to take control of a place using force

* During the uprising, the army occupied the city and took over the government headquarters.

demand – strong request for something, allowing for no refusal

* The bank robber had two demands before he would release the people in the bank: a helicopter and $5 million.

to be surrounded – to be on all sides of someone or something

* Yuko was surrounded by birds when she starting throwing pieces of bread up into the air for them to catch.

federal agent – a police officer who works for the national government; a national government employee who enforces the law

* When the murderer crossed over into another state, federal agents took over from the local police in their efforts to catch her.

consecutive – happening one right after another, with no break or gaps in between

* Mohammed missed four consecutive days of work when he got sick with the flu.

to threaten – for a person to say that he or she will hurt or harm a thing or another person if he or she does not get what he or she wants

* “If you throw that toy one more time, I’ll take the toy away and send you to your room,” Elin’s mother threatened.

antenna – a pole or wire that is used to receive and send radio signals

* On old televisions, the antennas are located on top and need to be moved in order to get a clear picture.

tenant – a person or organization that pays money each month to live in or use a space

* Marco was glad to have good tenants in his apartment, who kept the place clean and paid their rent on time each month.

inception – an action or instance that begins something

* The idea seemed unworkable from its inception.

conception – the start or creation of something in one’s mind; the way in which something is perceived or seen by others; the action of becoming pregnant and having a child growing in one’s body

* Does anyone have a conception of what this stage should look for this performance based on the script?

to beget – to give rise to; to bring about; to father and produce a child

* Violence begets more violence, so I suggest that you end your argument with the boy down the street before it gets out of hand.

to get back – to win back or recover something or somebody that appeared to be lost; to come or go again to a person, place, or situation

* We gave our money to a friend to invest, but he’s disappeared and we can’t get our money back.

cash on the barrelhead – money that is paid immediately when something is bought; immediate payment required

* I’m selling my old car and asking for cash on the barrelhead.

What Insiders Know

The Sears Mail-Order Catalogue

A “mail-order catalog” is a small book a company produces showing its products for sale. These catalogs contain product details and prices. People who find a product in the catalog they want to buy contact the company, either by mail or by phone to place an order.

Sears, Roebuck & Company produced one of the most famous mail-order catalogues in American history. In 1888, Richard Warren Sears, “founder” (person who began a business or organization) of Sears, Roebuck & Co. started a business selling watches through mail-order catalogs. This idea of using mail-order catalogs worked well for Sears, and by 1894, the Sears catalog had “grown to” (increased to) 322 pages. It featured “sewing machines” (machines used for making clothes and other cloth items), “bicycles” (a machine with two wheels moved by one’s feet and used for transportation), “sporting goods” (supplies used for playing sports), and even cars.

In 1895, Julius Rosenwald became one of the owners of Sears and organized the company so it could improve the handling of orders in an “economical” (using the least amount of money) and “efficient” (using the fastest method) way. The following year, in 1896, dolls, refrigerators, stoves, and even groceries were added to the catalog. By 1895, the company was producing a 532-page catalog that featured a wide variety of items and products.

Due to its increasing popularity and success, in 1906, Sears opened its own catalog “plant” (factory or large building where products are made, stored, and/or prepared for sending). The catalog was so well known that it was called “the Consumer’s Bible,” with “consumer” meaning “buyer” and “bible” referring to the most important and complete book available.