As far as the colonizers were concerned, we were never supposed to survive let alone master the papal documents and legal doctrines of Christian domination that nearly led to our complete eradication. We’ve walked through the fire of a centuries-long genocidal onslaught, and, yet, we press on. We have scars but we’re still standing. We’ve
AuthorSteven Newcomb
Steven Newcomb is a Shawnee-Lenape scholar and author. He has been studying and writing about U.S. federal Indian law and policy since the early 1980s, particularly the application of international law to Indigenous nations and peoples. Mr. Newcomb is the Director of the Indigenous Law Institute, which he co-founded with Birgil Kills Straight, a Traditional Headman and Elder of the Oglala Lakota Nation.
Examples of Domination and Racism in an Excerpt from the book America Moves West (Third Edition), Robert E. Riegel, New York: Henry Holt and Company (1957).
REMOVING THE INDIAN MENACE Early settlers in the West were surrounded by numerous dangers, by no means the least was the Indian. While the Indian was in many ways an interesting and admirable person, he made a very unpleasant neighbor for the white frontiersman. From time to time, and without due formality, he went to
A Brief Comment About Supreme Court Reaffirms the Doctrine of Christian Discovery and Domination
In what is being described as a “landmark” 5-4 decision, McGirt v. Oklahoma, the Supreme Court decided today that Congress never violated a 1866 treaty between the free and independent Creek Nation and the United States by explicitly and unilaterally disestablishing the Creek Nation’s territory, which the Supreme Court called “a reservation.” We see incoherent
The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code
At long last, here is our movie directed by Sheldon Wolfchild (Dakota) and based on my book Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (Fulcrum, 2008).
Tecumseh’s Speech
Tecumseh’s Speech The following is a speech by the great Shawnee leader Tecumseh, as recounted by the Pottawatomie leader, Chief Simon Pokagon. Simon Pokagon wrote: “My father and many others who listened to the speeches of Tecumseh many times repeated to me his words when I was a boy, but it was impossible to give
The Principle of Prescription
In his book Elements of International Law, first published in 1836, Henry Wheaton pointed out that “the general consent of mankind has established the principle, that long and uninterrupted possession [of land] by one nation excludes the claim of every other.” During the so-called Age of Discovery, the category “mankind” was restricted to Christian Europeans
Colonization and the Human Construction of a Reality System of Domination
Prior to the first voyage of Columbus in 1492, the original nations of the two continents that are now called North and South America (the “Western Hemisphere”) were living completely free and independent. The vast Atlantic Ocean separated those distinct and free nations from Western Christendom (Western Europe). Today, we, as the descendants of our
Are We As Native People Living Inside and Subject to the Mental World of the White Man?
In Red Man’s Land—White Man’s Law (1971), Wilcomb Washburn says he “hopes to describe” what he calls “the process by which the Indian moved from sovereign to ward to citizen.” (emphasis added) It would have been more accurate for him to have said it was the Christian Europeans thoughts and ideas that had “moved” “the
An explanation of the pattern of domination in the Papal Bull “Romanus Pontifex” (Roman Pontiff) issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1454
Below we see yet another example of the background pattern that is brought to the foreground and revealed by using the Domination Translator (the red lettering). According to Reinhard Bendix, in Kings Or People and the Mandate to Rule (1978), p. 254: The papal bull of 1454 granted Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) “the right,
Was the United States Founded As a Democracy?
In his splendid book The Lawless Law of Nations (1925), Sterling E. Edmunds says that governments may be defined as “groups of men possessing arbitrary power over other men.” (p. 426) If Edmunds is right, the idea of “self-government” is not a remedy of much merit for American Indians, for such a system would
The Domination Translator Applied to Some Passages of Pope Alexander VI’s Inter Caetera Papal Decree of May 4, 1493
The Domination Code and Translator The Domination Code is embedded in the English language. The code is just there in the background of our everyday language and our lives. To illustrate this, and to enable us to perform some code-breaking, I’ve created a simple technique that I call ‘The Domination Translator’. The Translator is deployed
The Principle of Prescription
In his book Elements of International Law, first published in 1836, Henry Wheaton pointed out that “the general consent of mankind has established the principle, that long and uninterrupted possession [of land] by one nation excludes the claim of every other.” During the so-called Age of Discovery, the category “mankind” was restricted to Christian Europeans,