November 15, 2024 • 53 mins
Uncover the often overlooked yet deeply influential Doctrine of Discovery with us, as we bring political science instructor and former Congressional candidate Steve Schwartzberg to the table. Join us to explore how this doctrine, woven into the fabric of U.S. history, continues to impact Indigenous peoples today. Steve shares his insights, drawing from influential thinkers like Steve Newcomb and Peter Dorico, to expose the historical context and the enduring injustices perpetuated by figures such as Chief Justice John Marshall. We also shine a light on Steve's 2018 Congressional campaign and his advocacy for crucial issues like Medicare for All and tribal sovereignty, providing an intimate glimpse into his motivations and vision for change.
We navigate the complex interplay between Christian theology and Indigenous rights, challenging the exclusionary practices rooted in the Doctrine of Discovery. By examining historical figures like Sepulveda, we reveal how religious rhetoric has been manipulated to justify oppression and violence. Our conversation is enriched by Indigenous perspectives on divinity and interconnectedness, offering a powerful counter-narrative to hierarchical religious constructs. This exploration invites listeners to reassess the impact of these doctrines on modern secular hierarchies and nationalism, urging a critical examination of the legacies that shape our world today.
In a poignant conclusion, we turn to the transformative power of grief, inspired by the Onondaga Nation's practices. Embracing grief as a pathway to healing, we discuss how acknowledging historical injustices can foster genuine relationships and understanding. The episode culminates in a reflection on the manipulation of history and the enduring myths surrounding figures like Columbus, highlighting the necessity of moving from guilt to love and interconnectedness. Through these rich discussions, we invite you to confront historical injustices and explore pathways to reconciliation, offering hope for a more inclusive and understanding future.
View the transcript and show notes at podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org. Learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery on our site DoctrineofDiscovery.org.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello and welcome to the Mapping the Doctrine of
Discovery podcast.
The producers of this podcastwould like to acknowledge with
respect the Onondaga Nationfirekeepers of the Haudenosaunee
, the indigenous peoples onwhose ancestral lands Syracuse
University now stands, and nowintroducing your hosts, phil
(00:27):
Arnold and Sandy Bigtree.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Welcome everyone to Mapping the Doctrine of
Discovery.
My name is Philip Arnold.
I'm professor of religion andcore faculty in Native American
Indigenous Studies and thefounding director of the Scano
Great Law Peace Center.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
And I'm Sandy Bigtree , a citizen of the Mohawk Nation
.
At Akwesasne.
I sat on the collaborative forthe Scano Center and I am also
on the board for the IndigenousValues Initiative.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
This podcast is being sponsored by the Henry Luce
Foundation.
Today, we're very happy to havea conversation with Steve
Schwartzberg.
Steve, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Thank you.
It is an honor and a pleasureto be here.
For those who don't know me,I'm the author of a book called
Arguments Over Genocide the Warof Words in the Congress and the
Supreme Court Over CherokeeRemoval.
I'm a former director ofundergraduate studies for
international studies at Yale, aformer candidate for Congress
in the Illinois 5th District andcurrently an instructor in
political science at DePaulUniversity.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So that was one of the things we wanted to ask you
about.
Well, running for Congress inthe 5th District in Chicago.
When was that and why?
Speaker 4 (01:48):
So that was 2018, and that was for two primary
reasons One, to raise the issueof Medicare for All, which I'm a
strong supporter of and theincumbent, michael Quigley who
won the election handily, by theway was at that point not a
supporter of.
He claims to have changed since, so maybe my cat did some good.
And second, to raise the issueof tribal sovereignty and to
(02:10):
make it clear to people that bytribal sovereignty, I mean the
sovereignty of any nation likeFrance, britain, the Mohawk
Nation.
All of these nations have, inmy opinion, equal rights under
the law of nations, and thoseequal rights should be
recognized by everyone.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, you know one of the things, that of course we
have mutual friends like SteveNewcomb, tink Tinker, peter
Dorico, and you've got all theseremarkable kind of endorsements
for your new book, argumentsOver Genocide, and you know we
want to get into that.
(02:43):
But I wonder if you could tellus briefly what brought you to
the general topic of thedoctrine of discovery and the
genocide of indigenous peoplesin the United States.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Well, this is a little unusual as a story.
It was the cover of a book.
I know it said don't judge abook by its cover, but there was
a book called the CherokeeRenaissance in the New Republic
some years ago which featuredthe famous image of Sequoia
gesturing with his pipe at the86 symbol syllabary that he had
developed.
That formed the basis of thewritten Cherokee language.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And I was fascinated.
I know the image.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Yes, I was fascinated with the idea that there had
been a renaissance and what thatmight mean Through that book.
Ultimately I came in contactwith Steve Russell, a Cherokee
jurist who managed to gethimself elected judge in Texas
which is no mean feat, I'm sureand who wrote a wonderful book
called Sequoia Rising, and Steveand I came into contact.
(03:39):
Through Steve I came intocontact with Peter Dorico and
then Steve Newcomb and JodeiGade and those around
redthoughtorg, and that was myreal source of introduction to
the doctrine of Christiandiscovery some years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Wow, yeah, what we've discovered doing this podcast
is that the doctrine ofdiscovery is what you would say
is a many-splendored thing.
I mean, I'm being sarcastichere, but there's a lot of
tentacles in this topic.
(04:13):
It reaches in all kinds ofdirections.
Of course, my orientation andour orientation is religion, but
you seem to have kind of adifferent orientation.
You're talking most explicitlyabout Marshall's trilogy.
(04:34):
Am I correct in that?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yes, I think.
Let me back it up and give it asomewhat larger frame.
Sure, let's start with Teocasand Gustafsson.
Steve Newcomb's formulation ofthe view from the shore, that is
(05:00):
to say the view of the nativepeoples watching these European
dominators coming across theAtlantic Ocean, I'm not really
qualified.
You can claim a right, on thebasis of that discovery, over
that country and over itsinhabitants.
You're making a claim that isabsurd and dishonest.
Dishonesty and violence thatare at the heart of the doctrine
(05:26):
of Christian discovery and atthe heart of our practice to
this day, as whenever thatdoctrine has been challenged
over the course of more thanfive centuries now, there has
been a habit on the part of theEuro-Christians as Tink Tinker
refers to white people, I thinkit's a better term for us there
has been a habit on our part ofdoubling down on moral depravity
, and that is what I see is atthe heart of the doctrine of
Christian discovery.
That's what John Marshall isdoing in his trilogy, which I
(05:49):
refer to as Marshall's WarAgainst the Rights of the Native
Nations.
Sorry, let me let you get aword in edgewise.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Well, right from the onset it was violent.
With the Jesuits' arrival inthe Northeast, even before these
laws were established, theyjust came in and within just a
couple decades claimed to haveshifted matriarchal societies
that were connected to a waythat they understood their
(06:18):
proper relationship in the world, to a patriarchal shift of
domination and hierarchy.
So that was already fomentingand has continued to foment in
who we are today.
And we're dealing with this now.
And religion was at the base ofthis, and now we're dealing
(06:38):
with Christian nationalizationand it's terrifying, christian
nationalization.
It's terrifying.
If we don't arrest this andidentify it and talk about this
for what it is, I don't see anyway of understanding our
predicament.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
I agree with that entirely.
I think I try and present ourpredicament as one of what I
call the global great divide,which is the divide between
those who believe in benevolentauthority, however they may want
to define it and people fightwars over that.
They believe in benevolentauthority as necessary to the
creation or establishment ormaintenance of any worthwhile
(07:16):
community and its relations withother communities, and those,
on the other hand, who recognizethat all life is one, that we
are diverse and many and unifiedat the same time all of our
relations and that the belovedcommunity in a sense already
exists, that our responsibilityas living beings is to live in
harmony and in balance with andwithin that community, not to
(07:39):
try and create something thatalready exists, but to be in
harmony and in relationship withwhat already exists.
That's sort of how I see theunderlying religious, spiritual
I'm not sure exactly how to talkabout it difference between the
view from the ship and the viewfrom the shore.
The view from the ship is theview of the dominators.
(08:02):
These are people who believe inauthority and the authority's
form is patriarchal.
But if they were taking amatriarchal form, it would still
be a belief in authority.
It would be like MargaretThatcher in Britain.
It wouldn't be anythingdifferent.
It would still be dominatingother people and it's the
(08:22):
dominating other people anddominating all our relations
that's so objectionable.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
That's the operative word.
Relationships are relations toone another and to the natural
world.
It was astounding how they knewhow to penetrate this culture.
They came here and we weretaught cross-board in all our
educations that Indigenouspeople were inferior and did not
(08:50):
have the ability to expressthemselves and communicate very
well.
But it's quite the contrary,because we practiced a peace and
establishing properrelationships with other
sovereign nations in thisterritory that were indigenous
sovereign.
They were great orators.
(09:11):
As soon as the Europeans camehere, they were right away
challenging them in their way ofthinking and how this could not
possibly sustain itself, andthey were traveling to Europe.
There are so many accounts ofthese great orators speaking in
Europe in 17th century, 18thcentury and some are claiming
(09:37):
today some of these very earlyorators actually triggered a
whole new way of thinking.
It became known as theEnlightenment.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
Yes, I think this is very true and it's very
important to realize that thedoubling down on moral depravity
that I'm talking about is, inMarshall's case, a reaching over
the Enlightenment, overdemocratic theory, back to 15th
century jurisprudence in orderto found US property law.
So there is a doubling down onthe dishonesty and the violence
(10:10):
there.
In a way, if you go back to the16th century debates between
Las Casas and Sepulveda withinSpain over the illegitimacy of
Spanish activity in the NewWorld, spanish land theft and
Spanish genocide, the claim thatLas Casas makes is that these
conquistas are evil,anti-christian and unlawful and
(10:35):
Sepulveda, defending the Spanishmonarchy I think I've got a
quote here that in fact I'm sureI do that captures Sepulveda's
language In prudence, talent,virtue and humanity.
There is inferior to theSpaniards, as children to adults
(10:56):
, women to men, as the wild andcruel to the most meek, as the
prodigiously intemperate to thecontinent, intemperate that I've
almost said as monkeys to men.
That's Sepulveda's claim in themiddle of the 1600s as to why
Las Casas is wrong.
In other words, las Casas saysno, this genocide is not to be
(11:17):
justified in Christian terms,and Sepulveda says, oh, but
we're a Christian civilizationand what we do is justifiable.
That's a doubling down on moraldepravity.
Then you get the Enlightenment,as you said, directly out of
the contact with indigenouspeoples and the realization that
there's a different way ofliving.
You get one of my favoritefigures, james Wilson, who I
(11:39):
consider in many ways the framer, the founder, the architect of
the Constitution of the UnitedStates.
In a pamphlet in 1744, he saysAll men are by nature equal and
free.
No one has the right to anyauthority over another without
his consent and all lawfulgovernment is founded upon the
consent of those who are subjectto it.
And he says we have no rightover the Indians, whether within
(12:02):
or without the real orpretended limits of any colony.
That is to say, he's a Democrat, small d, and he believes in
the sovereignty of all peoples.
And he forms a constitutionwith his allies that has
treaties as the supreme law ofthe land and these treaties are
definitely including treatieswith the native nations.
(12:23):
And these treaties aredefinitely including treaties
with the native nations.
The initial memo, in theinitial motion in the
constitutional convention refersto just treaties ratified.
But the language of theconstitution is treaties made or
which shall be madespecifically to include treaties
with the native nations.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
And John Marshall ignores all of that when he
doubles down on moral depravityin Johnson v McIntosh and then
again, even worse, in CherokeeNation v George.
Yeah, that's fascinating, youridea that Marshall jumps over
certain chunks of history thatreally define democracy in a way
you know, to reclaim, you know,the doctrine of discovery as an
(13:14):
original source of, you know,us property law.
It's always fascinated me andI'm going to maybe be a little
unfair because I know your areais not in religion but I just
have to ask what is it aboutChristianity that really becomes
(13:39):
so abusive, intrusive andpersistently so, I would say?
And you know there's a lot ofthings happening around 1492, a
lot of things, and I mean one ofthe things we've sort of been
(14:00):
able to tease out is the Age ofDiscovery is really just an
extension of the Crusades inmany ways, you know.
So I mean it is an openquestion for me.
I just wonder if you have ideasabout it.
I mean, what is this, what isit about Christianity in this
(14:24):
formulation that becomes soviolent and abusive?
Speaker 4 (14:29):
So I would say and this is interesting because I
come to Christianity fromJudaism, I'm baptized in 2006,
in search of a universalism, andwhat I find ultimately is a
false universalism.
But the initial promise thatattracted me was the claim you
know, in Christ there's neitherJew, nor Greek slave, nor free
male and female for all are one.
(14:50):
That's attractive, but theproblem is twofold.
The first is the assumptionthat the body of Christ, the
members of the community, aresomehow Christians rather than
all living beings.
Right, it means that those whoare inside are different from
those who are outside, andthey're going to bring the
language in.
(15:10):
Sepulveda's language in the16th century is drawing on the
gospels.
We will compel them to come in.
That's a quote to reference toLuke 14.
Now, initially that is meant tobe hospitality.
That is meant to be rhetoric,not meant to be hospitality.
That is meant to be, rhetoric,not in any way meant to be
violence, and Sepulveda turns itand makes it violence, although
there had been earlier.
St Augustine had done somethingsimilar with regard to people
(15:33):
already inside the church, butSepulveda takes it.
We're going to compel them tocome in with force and violence.
So partly it's a question ofwho is in, and if you don't have
everybody in from the get-go,then you're going to be abusive
to those who are on the outside.
And when I say everybody in, Idon't mean that people are to be
(15:53):
thinking of themselves asChristians, but any Christian
who wants to be a Christian inmy opinion should look to see
Christ in all living beings andto learn of who Christ is from
all living beings.
If the people coming over onthe ship had sought to learn
about Christianity from thenative peoples, they would have
learned a lot.
I mean.
I'll give you an example.
(16:14):
A friend of mine, jodei Gaudia,of the Yakama Nation, is asked
by a Christian friend of his youknow I'm a child of God, that's
who I am at the deepest level.
Who are you?
And you can hear in thatquestion all sorts of
problematic attitudes.
And Jode pauses for a momentand says of creation, yeah,
right and I think, from aChristian perspective, a sincere
(16:34):
Christian perspective, that isa more honest answer, a more
accurate answer, a more humbleanswer.
A better answer in every way,shape and form than this child
of God formulation.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
A better answer in every way, shape and form than
this child of God formulation.
Oh, it's such a dividing line.
We were working with Jesuitsbecause we repurposed a Jesuit
fort at the place where theHaudenosaunee's Great Law of
Peace was established.
So this was really challengingbecause nobody knew about the
Great Law of Peace.
Really challenging becausenobody knew about the great law
(17:07):
of peace, and it's a far betterstory to be telling than one of
failed conquest.
Actually, the Jesuits were runout in only a few months, but oh
my God you know, Well, just tofocus on peace, right?
Speaker 4 (17:19):
I mean, what do we want in our relations with one
another?
Speaker 3 (17:23):
But we would have priests talking to us and they
thought they were beingunderstanding by just
superimposing the word creatorfor their God.
And I would like, oh mygoodness, no, you cannot do that
.
Your God is hierarchical, Oursis not.
Ours is diverse, it'sever-changing, it's regenerative
(17:46):
in the very water we drink.
We're talking about completelydifferent orientations here and
that very basic, you know.
Effort to try to connect withus was more divisive because, no
, we are not, you.
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
I would say to Phil's question about what there is in
Christianity this is an evendeeper level of what there is.
That's wrong with Christianitythat you're touching on this
notion of the far away up theresomewhere divinity as against.
We are all interconnected andall of us are entitled to
(18:24):
respect and to rightrelationships.
The more horizontal view ofreality and of the fact that
there's an indwelling life ineverything.
That view is suppressed in theaxial age to a large extent and
not just in christianity acrossa host of religions and
(18:45):
spiritual philosophies and thennationalism comes in, I would
say in part as a result of thedoctrine of discovery, and
nationalism then squelches someof this, uh, super hierarchical
stuff, but doesn't replace itwith equality, replaces it with
its own secular hierarchies.
That's how I view the doctrineof Christian.
(19:06):
Discovery, is as a substitutereligion for what Christianity
was claiming to be but was notactually pursuing.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
There is a theology implied in the doctrine of
discovery.
Certainly, I mean, that's notthe work that we would take on.
Necessarily we wouldn't workwithin, say, a specific
denomination or something, butrather uh to to change, say,
their theological positioning ororientation.
But but I can see what you meanin terms of the doctrine of
(19:49):
discovery itself having a kindof implicit theology, a notion
of a God, right, right.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
It's a God that we own it.
It's obscene and you'reobedient to it.
Obedient to it and force otherpeople into obedience to it at
knife point and gun point Right.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So one of the things that Sandy was indicating is
kind of the urgency of theseissues around the doctrine of
discovery and why we'rerevisiting all this history.
It's not something I thought Iwould do when I was in graduate
school, but there is an urgencyto this because you see it
(20:32):
playing out in the world today,to this, because you see it
playing out in the world today,christian nationalism, for
example, like it, has its originin doctrine of discovery,
doctrine of Christian discovery.
I wonder what you think of thatand how you conceive of that
(20:52):
linkage.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
So I think of it in two ways.
One One as an exaggeration ofsomething that is ubiquitous in
even American society at itsbest.
So American society at its bestI still think of in terms of
the way John Trudell puts ittechnologic civilization.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, we love John Trudell.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
The soul of that technologic civilization is
naturalism right and it's best.
That's a sense that those whoare members of the nation are
equal and sovereign.
The problem, of course, is thatall sorts of people are left
out who are not treated as equaland not treated as sovereign.
But that's at its best andthat's just not good enough.
Yeah, that is still coming fromthe notion that we came over
(21:36):
here, we Euro-Christians, and wecan dominate here.
In fact, the laws that involveliving with this land, the laws
of this land, are theinternational laws and usages
that were present among thenative nations here before the
Euro-Christians got here.
That's what valid law is.
So the laws, the teachings ofthe Anishinaabek, for example,
about love, respect, truth,honesty, courage, humility,
(22:02):
wisdom, the teachings thatsurround those words that I just
named, right, that's legalfoundation of just one Native
nation or group of Nativenations, but it, I think, is
compatible with the ontologiesof the Native nations of Turtle
(22:22):
Island generally and it's notcompatible with American law.
American law doesn't rely onthese foundations.
And even if it did rely onthese foundations, it relies on
them through authority, throughdomination, as opposed to
through feeling what the bodypolitic feels is true and how we
(22:43):
should act.
And I take this back to thedebates over genocide in the
1830s, where you have somebodylike Jeremiah Everett who says
that we should be feeling keenlythe injustice that we're about
to perpetrate on the Nativenations.
He's appealing to the Americanpeople to feel, and that appeal
(23:05):
to feeling is an appeal to reallaw, in my opinion.
But when we face our law onwhat the body politic feels of
justice, feels of rightrelations, feels of truth, feels
of honesty, feels of wisdom,that is not how the American
people at their best think oftheir constitution.
(23:26):
So, I think of white Christiannationalism as an exaggeration
of the worst features.
I think even at best it's justnot good enough I mean what's
fascinating about marshall?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
well, sorry, san, did you want to say what's
fascinating to me about marshallis that he utilizes this
catholic uh, these catholicformulations coming out of the
vatican and papal bulls in aprotest nation-building project,
and at the time, of course,there would be no relationship
(24:02):
with Catholics or the Vatican.
That would have been toleratedby the founding fathers in these
early formulations of theUnited States.
And yet theologically, if youwant to put it that way,
theologically he's utilizingthis language for a Protestant
(24:25):
nation.
So it doesn't really matter interms of what kind of
Christianity we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
Well, it does matter because he's dishonest.
I mean, in a sense you can saythat all Euro Christians are
dishonest, but there's againthis intensification of it among
the worst elements.
Let me give you three quotes,and that will convey where I'm
coming from.
The first is from John Forsyth,who's a senator from Georgia,
who's the central advocate ofwhat becomes the Trail of Tears,
(24:55):
and he says and this is themost succinct formulation of the
doctrine of Christian discoveryin this period that I know of.
He says all Christendom seemsto have imagined that, by
conveying that immortal lifepromised by the Prince of Peace
to fallen man to the aboriginesof this country, the right was
fairly acquired of disposing oftheir persons and their property
(25:16):
at pleasure.
Okay, that's the extremeformulation of the doctrine of
Christian discovery and that'sthe majority position in the
Congress.
The minority position in theCongress, although it's a close
run thing the vote is 102 to 97in the House of Representatives
the minority position is bestarticulated by Asher Robbins.
He says does our civilizationgive us a title to his right, a
(25:40):
right which he inherits equallywith us from the gift of nature
and of nature's God?
The Indian is a man and has allthe rights of man, the same God
who made us, made him andendowed him with the same rights
, for of one blood hath he madeall the men who dwell upon the
earth.
Now that's an inadequateposition because it's still
saying we can decide what thenational rights of the Native
Nations are on their land.
(26:01):
But it's at least a more honestposition than Forsyth's.
And what does Marshall do whenthese two positions come before
the Supreme Court?
He says if it be true that theCherokee Nation have rights,
this is not the tribunal inwhich those rights are to be
asserted.
If it be true that wrongs havebeen inflicted and still greater
(26:22):
are to be apprehended, this isnot the tribunal which can
redress the past or prevent thefuture.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Do you need help catching up on today's topic or
do you want to learn more aboutthe resources mentioned?
If so, please check our websiteat
podcastdoctrineofdiscoveryorgfor more information and, if you
like this episode, review it onApple, spotify or wherever you
listen to podcasts.
And now back to theconversation.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
This tribunal is the Supreme Court right.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
This is the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is washingits hands of the Constitution
and because it washes its handsof the Constitution, it changes
constitutional law to this day.
It makes a claim that theUnited States has a right to
dominate the Native Nations.
It has a right to deny or todisregard any treaty with the
Native Nations.
It assumes a position ofsupremacy.
(27:16):
In christian terms, in whiteterms, however you want to look
at it, that persists to this dayas the law of the land, even
though it's not compatible withthe constitution.
But it is.
It is every supreme courtdecision since then.
You read peter dorico'swonderful book federal
anti-Indian Law.
You can see every decisionsince the Marshall Trilogy,
(27:38):
since Marshall's war, and youcan see this dominationist
politics denying theConstitution, denying the Native
Nations their rights, even inour law.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
So we've gotten different takes on the trilogy
in these podcasts, For example,Lindsay Robertson, who wrote an
excellent book on Johnson.
He said that Marshall maybejust sort of stepped in it with
(28:35):
Johnson and then regretted theimplications of the decisions
later on, particularly inWorcester.
So you seem to have a differentkind of perspective.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Yes, I have a very different perspective from that
and I go at length in my bookinto Marshall's dishonesty and I
provide evidence for it.
I know we want to have somebodyto be a hero against Andrew
Jackson or somebody who at leaststands up partially against
Andrew Jackson.
It isn't John Marshall.
John Marshall is accused by thelawyer for the Cherokee.
There are two lawyers for theCherokee Nation in oral argument
(29:02):
in Cherokee Nation v Georgia.
One of them, william Wirt, findsa book that Marshall wrote in
1804, 1805.
It's a biography of GeorgeWashington and in this biography
it talks about the founding ofGeorgia in 1733 and the way the
Georgians, or theEuro-Christians coming over who
will become Georgians, have thischarter from the king and
(29:26):
they're claiming, the Georgiansin the 1830s, that this charter
gives them domination rightsover the native peoples and the
native people's lands.
And what, uh, this lawyerpoints out is that marshall
himself in his book saidalthough they had this charter,
they signed a treaty with thecreek nation to whom these lands
(29:49):
were acknowledged to belong.
Right, marshall deletes thatsentence in later editions of
the book to those lands who areacknowledged to belong.
Oh no, no, we're just going toerase that.
That's one of many examples Igive of his dishonesty.
In Worcester v Georgia hepretends to support the rights
(30:13):
of the Cherokee Nation, but henever talks about their treaty
rights.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Right.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Their treaty rights are rights under the supreme law
of the United States and theUnited States is bound by those
treaties and obliged to complywith them.
And Marshall, carefully,doesn't mention any treaty
rights.
He says they have the rank oftreaty partners.
What does that mean?
It doesn't mean that they'vegot any rights.
They don't have rights, legalrights, in Marshall's framework.
(30:40):
What they have is naturalrights and traditional rights,
and those can be encroached uponby the federal government at
will.
So yes, worcester v Georgia isa slap at Georgia's efforts to
unilaterally pursue genocide.
Georgia is a slap at Georgia'sefforts to unilaterally pursue
genocide.
But it says the Congress,effectively, can pursue genocide
on its own, no problem.
(31:01):
That's how Worcester v Georgiashould be read, in my judgment.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
And then federal Indian law kind of dictates that
Native nations are now underthe guardianship of the United
States.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Right.
This is another key phrase.
What does it mean to be underthe guardianship?
What does the trustrelationship mean?
People talk about the trustrelationship as if it's some
kind of great thing.
The first instance of the trustrelationship in practice in
Cherokee Nation v Georgia is thegenocide of the 1830s.
It's saying we're going totrust the Congress of the United
States to move all of theseNative nations across the
Mississippi and say 25, 20% ofthem are going to die along the
(31:42):
way.
And this is known in advance.
Louis Cass, the Secretary ofWar in the Jackson
administration, writes toJackson in September of 1831,
and he says without adequatepreparations.
To Jackson in September of 1831, and he says without adequate
preparations, great sufferingsmust be encountered upon the
journey and many will doubtlessperish.
And months later one in fiveChoctaw nationals are dead.
(32:06):
And the killing because that'swhat it is, the killing goes on
for year after year after yearin the 1830s.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Fascism.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
This is costing 40% of the national budget.
This is obscenity and weEuro-Christians are largely
unaware of this and unaware ofthe way it's justified by the
Supreme Court and the way ittwists every little bit of our
relations with the Nativenations to this day.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yeah Well, this happened in Europe.
You in the romans, yes, rightacross the country.
Um, you know, many of ourcities in new york state are
named after rome.
I mean, let's you know, it'sjust completely bizarre.
But how, how do some of thefounding fathers embrace the
hudnishoni and and theprinciples of the great law of
(32:56):
peace and they use the symbolismof the clustered arrows to
represent the presidential seal?
It's just a few years after that, the Roman fascist begins a
campaign and on either side ofthe House of Representatives
speaker, you know the house it'slike how does you know it's
(33:17):
right during this time, it kindof makes this shift and our
countries divide it.
And I don't want to sayelections are, you know, a
horrible thing, but theHaudenosaunee were able to
arrive to consensus andagreements on how to proceed,
and yet that was one of thefirst acts the United States
forced on Native nations was tomake them vote, and that's
(33:41):
always like, puts you inopposition.
It's not relationship building,you know, it's a very brash way
that divides families andfriends, and we're seeing that
more today than we have yetsince the Civil.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
War.
I think your comment is verywise.
I think that's exactly right.
What I talk about in an essaythat was published in Dissident
Voice, called RethinkingNationalism and Democracy with a
View from the Shore, is thatdemocracy, as we see it,
democracy and human rights theway the United States advertises
it, is a failed effort to enterinto indigenous history and
(34:15):
culture.
It's an attempt to beself-governing without knowing
what self-government really is,because self-government rests on
ontologies, on ways of knowingmoral truth, and there are many,
many ontologies in theindigenous world, but they all
connect, as far as I understandit, morality and knowledge,
(34:43):
whereas in the Western world,knowledge and power are made to
be interchangeable and moralityis someplace else.
And so if we are going to finda way out of our current dilemma
, we, the world, at this point Ithink we have to move to
voluntarily entering intomillennia of indigenous culture
and indigenous ontologies.
That's the great challenge thatwe face to get free of
(35:03):
technologic civilization.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That's terrific.
I have a persistent question,though, going back to the 1830s.
Sorry question, though, goingback to the 1830s, sorry, you
know I do want to.
I do want to, you know, getinto the consequences of all
this.
(35:27):
But but you know, oftentimes,you know, the presidency of
Andrew Jackson is presented askind of a coup.
You know around the removalsagainst, you know, the wishes of
Congress and against theSupreme Court.
You know we have a kind ofconstitutional crisis at that
moment, or that's how somepeople would interpret what's
going on.
What I hear is you've got adifferent kind of take on all
(35:50):
that, right?
Speaker 4 (35:51):
Yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
That basically Jackson and Marshall are kind of
what, barking up the same tree,sort of.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
Yes, and not just Jackson and Marshall, but the
Congress.
The Congress votes very clearlyfor removal, for the Trail of
Tears, the majority of Congress.
It's close, but there is amajority on the wrong side of
the issue.
But I would say that the thetrajectory of American democracy
(36:21):
.
To come back to Sandy'squestion, at one point has
somebody like Benjamin Franklinsaying we think our manners the
height of civility, they thinkthe same of theirs.
There's an openness, arecognition that the Native
nations have their own concepts,their own ways of doing things
and that we can learn from them.
(36:42):
Have their own concepts theirown ways of doing things and
that we can learn from them.
There is an openness, and thatopenness is connected to the
Enlightenment, obviously, andit's connected to a position on
racial equality that has beensuppressed in the public memory,
that I want to bring forwardand then talk about how that
position is defeated in the1830s.
(37:05):
So, the position is.
This is Congressman James Hill,house of Connecticut, in 1796
in the House of Representatives.
The first principle that islaid down in the rights of man
is that all men are born freeand equal.
It does not say all white men.
He did not believe he said thatthe House would ever admit so
absurd a doctrine as thatdifferent shades in a man's
(37:26):
complexion would increase ordiminish his natural rights.
There is a naivete in thefounding generation as well as
hypocrisy, as well as activeadvocacy for slavery.
That naivete gets squelched.
That naivete had somepossibilities of hope for
understanding other peoples andunderstanding other ways of
(37:50):
being in the world.
It gets squelched in the 1830sby states' rights.
But what are states' rights?
States' rights are the claimthat because some Christians saw
with their magic Christian eyesthis chartered territory, they
own it and can do whatever theywant to the land and its
inhabitants.
That's the hardcore Christiandiscovery basis of states'
(38:11):
rights.
And in the 1830s Georgia issaying we've got the right to
squelch the Cherokee Nation andsquelch the Creek Nation.
Forsyth is explicitly genocidal, he says, if their separate
existence as a tribe isdestroyed by state legislative
enactments, the control of thegovernment of the United States
(38:33):
even over the commerce with themis at an end.
So you've got your constitution, but we've got our state, our
state of Georgia, and we'regoing to commit genocide or
you're going to get these Indiannations off of our land.
That's the threat that Georgiais making, and not just Andrew
Jackson is affected by thisthreat and not just John
Marshall is affected by thisthreat, but John Quincy Adams,
(38:54):
who's the opposition to Jacksonin 1828, after he loses the
election, basically sides withGeorgia.
So it would have been the sameeven if John Quincy Adams had
won in 1828.
The driving force behind thegenocide of the 1830s is the
state of Georgia and the conceptof states' rights and the
(39:15):
concept of Christian discovery,and that sweeps all before its
path.
Path ultimately.
But there is massive oppositionand I want to stress that it is
a fought out issue in this andthe people who are fighting for
some semblance of justice andhonesty are defeated.
Marshall's not one of thosefighting for some semblance of
(39:38):
justice and honesty andJackson's not one of those
people fighting for somesemblance of justice and honesty
, and Jackson's not one of thosepeople fighting for some
semblance of justice and honesty, and Georgia certainly isn't so
this idea of states' rights isreally the coup against
federalism, then it's the coupagainst federalism.
but federalism is John Marshall.
He's as corrupt as states'rights.
(39:58):
People are right, because whatWilson said was that we have our
rights as a people, as asovereign people, under the law
of nations and, ultimately,under God.
We're answerable to the law ofnations, we're answerable to
other peoples, we're answerableto God.
And Marshall says no, we're notanswerable to anybody other
than ourselves.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, right, right other than ourselves.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Yeah, right, Right.
But I'd heard also that theConstitution acknowledges
treaties with Indian nations asbeing the supreme law of the
land.
Writing it in the Constitutionin a way solidified the status
of the federal government.
So, because the states weregaining power and it was
becoming disjointed and therewas no way to unify, that's
(40:47):
completely against what theHaudenosaunee were talking about
, this union of nations comingtogether.
So you've got it's all divided.
I mean, some people are tryingto see through this new
imagining of the Americas andothers are still carrying
forward this violent threat ofthe Roman Empire.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
Right, I think it's an excellent way of putting it
that it's the violent threat ofthe Roman Empire that becomes
the dominant mainstream.
In some sense, it's always thedominant mainstream.
It's challenged and thenthere's a doubling down on moral
depravity.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
So yeah, that's why we've often talked about the
1790 Non-Intercourse Act.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Right, which is thrown over, it sounds like, by
the kind of states' rightsmovement that you're describing.
That you're describing, youknow, and after all, the
Non-Intercourse Act is there totry to substantiate the federal
government.
You know, over and against.
You know they can't make theselittle deals.
(41:51):
States can't make deals withindividual Native nations and
such.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Because every agreement transaction between
states and Native nations has tobe ratified by Congress.
And that's what that was,repositioning that again.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, fascinating.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
I've got a quote here I want to share with you from
George Washington that I thinkgets at this pretty clearly.
Pretty clearly.
This is Washington in 1789,urging the Senate of the United
States to establish the practiceof ratifying treaties with the
(42:30):
Native Nations.
It doubtless is important thatall treaties and compacts formed
by the United States with othernations, whether civilized or
not, should be made with cautionand executed with fidelity.
So there is somebody I thinkWashington is pretty
hypocritical but incrediblyviolent.
But in spite of the hypocrisyand the violence, at least is
(42:52):
giving lip service to the truththat treaties are the supreme
law of the land.
That is attacked by JohnForsyth in a way that carries
dishonesty.
I mean, forgive me forpoliticizing this by bringing in
Donald Trump, but I thinkForsyth and Trump are peas in a
pot in this.
This is Forsyth's languagebecause he's got to deal with
(43:14):
this question of these treaties,and he says that the president
has made, with the advice andconsent of the Senate, various
contracts with Indians andcalled them treaties is not to
consent of the Senate, variouscontracts with Indians and
called them treaties is not tobe denied.
The various contracts have beenmade with the Indians by states
and individuals under thesuperintendents of the United
States is certain.
They have been submitted to theSenate, voted upon as it had
(43:34):
been called, treaties.
What I assert is that theseinstruments are not technically
treaties, supreme laws of theland, superior in obligation to
state constitutions and statelaws.
Can it be believed that thestern jealousy of the state
governments gave to the UnitedStates the power to use a
miserable fragment of thepopulation of a state to extend
indefinitely their authority andnarrow that of the state
(43:56):
government?
How, then, can a contract madewith a petty, dependent tribe of
half-starved Indians beproperly dignified with a name
and claim the imposing characterof a treaty?
Again, this is just dishonestyand violence.
This is who we are.
At some very deep level, thereare people within us who are
fighting to change that.
(44:16):
The whole hope of theEnlightenment, the whole hope of
the American Revolution, hopeof the american revolution, was
that the american people wouldbe self-governing the way the
native nations areself-governing right that was
the hope and that was smashedvery early on with the emergence
of the state governments, withthe articles of confederation.
there was an effort in theconstitution to try and bring
(44:38):
back in some respect forinternational law, for the law
of nations, for the common good,but by and large the trajectory
has been downhill in terms ofour relations with the Native
Nations all the way from thebeginning.
The notion of progress thatAmericans like to believe in has
(45:01):
no relationship to reality whenit comes to our relations with
the Native Nations.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Yeah, yeah, and I just can't help but wonder the
consequences for the trilogyMarshall.
You know the removals, thisearly period, how it's being
played out today.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
I mean, it seems we're in the middle of, you know
, election season, seems likeit's been going on forever and
we, you know you, just see thesame themes.
It's not so much like historyrepeating itself, it's more like
we have a kind of mythicframework that we're operating
(45:47):
within.
You know, I'll use thereligious language you know, or
some other.
Maybe we're just structurallybuilt in the United States in a
way that, you know, we seem tonot be able to break out of this
kind of pattern.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
I think the way we break out of this is by, first
of all, feeling grief.
I don't think we break out ofthis by fixing it.
I think the presumption that wecould fix anything, especially
without working with otherpeoples, without working with
the Native nations, withoutrecognizing their leadership, is
an obscenity.
We cannot fix things, andthat's the way we tend to go is.
(46:29):
We want to fix things.
But if we could manage to sitwith our own grief at the
injustice we have inflicted onothers, even just for a little
while, it might open us to theidea that there are different
ways of being in the world.
There are different ways ofdoing things.
We might begin to ask somequestions.
That's where my hope is is thatthe American people can come to
(46:51):
sit with the grief of our owninjustice and to think about
what we might do differently inthe world what we might do
differently in the world.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
It's interesting that you mentioned grief because, as
you know, we're in the OnondagaNation territory here in
Syracuse, new York, and OnondagaNation is maybe one of only
three federally recognizedNative American nations of the
575, or whatever it is now thathave rejected the Bureau of
(47:29):
Indian Affairs government, thatstill govern themselves with
their clan representation,govern themselves by the great
law of peace, what's called thelonghouse tradition, and have
done for thousands of years, andtheir process is all centered
(47:52):
around grief, what they callcondolence right in English, the
process of raising leadershipinto their Representatives.
Yeah, the clan representativesinto their positions, their life
positions, is all through theprocess of condolence.
So they I think this is one ofthe more profound aspects of the
(48:17):
Haudenosaunee, and likely inother traditions as well,
because you know, if you know,uh, if you really sit with, as
you say, sit with your grief, uh, around the passing of a person
, or you know um a certainmoment, then that can, that can
(48:39):
lead to new kinds of um, newkinds of relationships.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
Right, I mean, no one really talks about grief yeah.
It's like hidden.
It's hidden from your children.
You know this dominant society.
They refrain from taking theirchildren to funerals.
You know they're told thesemade-up stories even about, like
holidays.
(49:05):
It's all kind of based in liesand avoidance.
We've got a lot to sift throughhere because we've been
educated, all of us now, withsome kind of manipulative
propaganda.
It's, frankly, propaganda.
I was just talking about ourColumbus statue here.
(49:26):
You know it's not retaininghistory.
Nobody knows the history abouthim sailing here on the
doctrines of discovery toannihilate millions of people,
you know, and take all theirwealth and enslave their bodies.
I mean, nobody, that's thehistory.
The other that he's a hero.
That's propaganda, you know.
(49:48):
And are we going to start, youknow, seeing through what's
honorable and it's going tounite us or something that's
just going to subdue anddominate, you know, masses of
peoples and countries and theenvironment.
I mean I don't know how we'regoing to get out of this.
Frankly, it's really terrifying.
Speaker 4 (50:11):
I think part of the reason why grief opens a path
out of it is it takes us out ofour egos, and I think the United
States, I think every peoplewell, every non-Indigenous
people, has an ego, and that egotries to be dominant.
And to the extent that theAmerican people focus on their
(50:34):
state, on their government, onstructures of power and
authority, on the super rich, itdoesn't focus on what really
matters, on what's real.
It's focusing on propaganda, asyou say.
It's focusing on this ego, andthis ego it's not really there.
What's really there in theworld is our relationships with
(50:57):
one another and it's our lovefor one another.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
If we can feel, feel that we can find our way out of
the situation that we're inright, I mean not to just jump
into religion, but it's areligion based on um sin and
guilt yeah you know how, aboutthere questioning, how do we
(51:23):
raise a loving world or familythat's wholesome when it's just
drilled into you?
You have to focus to save yoursoul, on salvation, your
individual salvation.
To cut through all this.
No, I don't think that's goingto do it.
It hasn't so far.
You know we've got to connectwith one another and the earth,
(51:46):
you know, have relationshipsthat are viable and regenerative
and healthy.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
Yeah, I agree with that entirely.
The idea that you can save anego, because that's really what
it is.
It's looking for salvation foran ego rather than salvation for
a true self, because salvationfor a true self, you know, is in
relationships.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
Right, well put.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, which are all around us anyway.
Right, I would like to thankyou, stephen, for a really
fascinating conversation.
The book is Arguments OverGenocide, the War of Words in
the Congress and the SupremeCourt Over Cherokee Removal,
published last year, nowavailable in paperback.
(52:33):
Thanks very much.
This has been a terrificconversation.
Speaker 3 (52:38):
Yes, thank you, yes, thank you and good luck with
your work.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Appreciate it you as well.
The producers of this podcastwere Adam DJ Brett and Jordan
Lund-Cologne.
Our intro and outro is socialdancing music by Oris Edwards
and Regis Cook.
This podcast is funded incollaboration with the Henry
Luce Foundation, syracuseUniversity and Hendrix Chapel
(53:08):
and the Indigenous ValuesInitiative.
If you like this episode,please check out our website and
make sure to subscribe.
Hello and welcome to the Mapping the Doctrine of
Discovery podcast.
The producers of this podcastwould like to acknowledge with
respect the Onondaga Nationfirekeepers of the Haudenosaunee
, the indigenous peoples onwhose ancestral lands Syracuse
University now stands, and nowintroducing your hosts, phil
(00:27):
Arnold and Sandy Bigtree.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Welcome everyone to Mapping the Doctrine of
Discovery.
My name is Philip Arnold.
I'm professor of religion andcore faculty in Native American
Indigenous Studies and thefounding director of the Scano
Great Law Peace Center.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
And I'm Sandy Bigtree , a citizen of the Mohawk Nation
.
At Akwesasne.
I sat on the collaborative forthe Scano Center and I am also
on the board for the IndigenousValues Initiative.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
This podcast is being sponsored by the Henry Luce
Foundation.
Today, we're very happy to havea conversation with Steve
Schwartzberg.
Steve, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Thank you.
It is an honor and a pleasureto be here.
For those who don't know me,I'm the author of a book called
Arguments Over Genocide the Warof Words in the Congress and the
Supreme Court Over CherokeeRemoval.
I'm a former director ofundergraduate studies for
international studies at Yale, aformer candidate for Congress
in the Illinois 5th District andcurrently an instructor in
political science at DePaulUniversity.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So that was one of the things we wanted to ask you
about.
Well, running for Congress inthe 5th District in Chicago.
When was that and why?
Speaker 4 (01:48):
So that was 2018, and that was for two primary
reasons One, to raise the issueof Medicare for All, which I'm a
strong supporter of and theincumbent, michael Quigley who
won the election handily, by theway was at that point not a
supporter of.
He claims to have changed since, so maybe my cat did some good.
And second, to raise the issueof tribal sovereignty and to
(02:10):
make it clear to people that bytribal sovereignty, I mean the
sovereignty of any nation likeFrance, britain, the Mohawk
Nation.
All of these nations have, inmy opinion, equal rights under
the law of nations, and thoseequal rights should be
recognized by everyone.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah, you know one of the things, that of course we
have mutual friends like SteveNewcomb, tink Tinker, peter
Dorico, and you've got all theseremarkable kind of endorsements
for your new book, argumentsOver Genocide, and you know we
want to get into that.
(02:43):
But I wonder if you could tellus briefly what brought you to
the general topic of thedoctrine of discovery and the
genocide of indigenous peoplesin the United States.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Well, this is a little unusual as a story.
It was the cover of a book.
I know it said don't judge abook by its cover, but there was
a book called the CherokeeRenaissance in the New Republic
some years ago which featuredthe famous image of Sequoia
gesturing with his pipe at the86 symbol syllabary that he had
developed.
That formed the basis of thewritten Cherokee language.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
And I was fascinated.
I know the image.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Yes, I was fascinated with the idea that there had
been a renaissance and what thatmight mean Through that book.
Ultimately I came in contactwith Steve Russell, a Cherokee
jurist who managed to gethimself elected judge in Texas
which is no mean feat, I'm sureand who wrote a wonderful book
called Sequoia Rising, and Steveand I came into contact.
(03:39):
Through Steve I came intocontact with Peter Dorico and
then Steve Newcomb and JodeiGade and those around
redthoughtorg, and that was myreal source of introduction to
the doctrine of Christiandiscovery some years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Wow, yeah, what we've discovered doing this podcast
is that the doctrine ofdiscovery is what you would say
is a many-splendored thing.
I mean, I'm being sarcastichere, but there's a lot of
tentacles in this topic.
(04:13):
It reaches in all kinds ofdirections.
Of course, my orientation andour orientation is religion, but
you seem to have kind of adifferent orientation.
You're talking most explicitlyabout Marshall's trilogy.
(04:34):
Am I correct in that?
Speaker 4 (04:36):
Yes, I think.
Let me back it up and give it asomewhat larger frame.
Sure, let's start with Teocasand Gustafsson.
Steve Newcomb's formulation ofthe view from the shore, that is
(05:00):
to say the view of the nativepeoples watching these European
dominators coming across theAtlantic Ocean, I'm not really
qualified.
You can claim a right, on thebasis of that discovery, over
that country and over itsinhabitants.
You're making a claim that isabsurd and dishonest.
Dishonesty and violence thatare at the heart of the doctrine
(05:26):
of Christian discovery and atthe heart of our practice to
this day, as whenever thatdoctrine has been challenged
over the course of more thanfive centuries now, there has
been a habit on the part of theEuro-Christians as Tink Tinker
refers to white people, I thinkit's a better term for us there
has been a habit on our part ofdoubling down on moral depravity
, and that is what I see is atthe heart of the doctrine of
Christian discovery.
That's what John Marshall isdoing in his trilogy, which I
(05:49):
refer to as Marshall's WarAgainst the Rights of the Native
Nations.
Sorry, let me let you get aword in edgewise.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Well, right from the onset it was violent.
With the Jesuits' arrival inthe Northeast, even before these
laws were established, theyjust came in and within just a
couple decades claimed to haveshifted matriarchal societies
that were connected to a waythat they understood their
(06:18):
proper relationship in the world, to a patriarchal shift of
domination and hierarchy.
So that was already fomentingand has continued to foment in
who we are today.
And we're dealing with this now.
And religion was at the base ofthis, and now we're dealing
(06:38):
with Christian nationalizationand it's terrifying, christian
nationalization.
It's terrifying.
If we don't arrest this andidentify it and talk about this
for what it is, I don't see anyway of understanding our
predicament.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
I agree with that entirely.
I think I try and present ourpredicament as one of what I
call the global great divide,which is the divide between
those who believe in benevolentauthority, however they may want
to define it and people fightwars over that.
They believe in benevolentauthority as necessary to the
creation or establishment ormaintenance of any worthwhile
(07:16):
community and its relations withother communities, and those,
on the other hand, who recognizethat all life is one, that we
are diverse and many and unifiedat the same time all of our
relations and that the belovedcommunity in a sense already
exists, that our responsibilityas living beings is to live in
harmony and in balance with andwithin that community, not to
(07:39):
try and create something thatalready exists, but to be in
harmony and in relationship withwhat already exists.
That's sort of how I see theunderlying religious, spiritual
I'm not sure exactly how to talkabout it difference between the
view from the ship and the viewfrom the shore.
The view from the ship is theview of the dominators.
(08:02):
These are people who believe inauthority and the authority's
form is patriarchal.
But if they were taking amatriarchal form, it would still
be a belief in authority.
It would be like MargaretThatcher in Britain.
It wouldn't be anythingdifferent.
It would still be dominatingother people and it's the
(08:22):
dominating other people anddominating all our relations
that's so objectionable.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
That's the operative word.
Relationships are relations toone another and to the natural
world.
It was astounding how they knewhow to penetrate this culture.
They came here and we weretaught cross-board in all our
educations that Indigenouspeople were inferior and did not
(08:50):
have the ability to expressthemselves and communicate very
well.
But it's quite the contrary,because we practiced a peace and
establishing properrelationships with other
sovereign nations in thisterritory that were indigenous
sovereign.
They were great orators.
(09:11):
As soon as the Europeans camehere, they were right away
challenging them in their way ofthinking and how this could not
possibly sustain itself, andthey were traveling to Europe.
There are so many accounts ofthese great orators speaking in
Europe in 17th century, 18thcentury and some are claiming
(09:37):
today some of these very earlyorators actually triggered a
whole new way of thinking.
It became known as theEnlightenment.
Speaker 4 (09:47):
Yes, I think this is very true and it's very
important to realize that thedoubling down on moral depravity
that I'm talking about is, inMarshall's case, a reaching over
the Enlightenment, overdemocratic theory, back to 15th
century jurisprudence in orderto found US property law.
So there is a doubling down onthe dishonesty and the violence
(10:10):
there.
In a way, if you go back to the16th century debates between
Las Casas and Sepulveda withinSpain over the illegitimacy of
Spanish activity in the NewWorld, spanish land theft and
Spanish genocide, the claim thatLas Casas makes is that these
conquistas are evil,anti-christian and unlawful and
(10:35):
Sepulveda, defending the Spanishmonarchy I think I've got a
quote here that in fact I'm sureI do that captures Sepulveda's
language In prudence, talent,virtue and humanity.
There is inferior to theSpaniards, as children to adults
(10:56):
, women to men, as the wild andcruel to the most meek, as the
prodigiously intemperate to thecontinent, intemperate that I've
almost said as monkeys to men.
That's Sepulveda's claim in themiddle of the 1600s as to why
Las Casas is wrong.
In other words, las Casas saysno, this genocide is not to be
(11:17):
justified in Christian terms,and Sepulveda says, oh, but
we're a Christian civilizationand what we do is justifiable.
That's a doubling down on moraldepravity.
Then you get the Enlightenment,as you said, directly out of
the contact with indigenouspeoples and the realization that
there's a different way ofliving.
You get one of my favoritefigures, james Wilson, who I
(11:39):
consider in many ways the framer, the founder, the architect of
the Constitution of the UnitedStates.
In a pamphlet in 1744, he saysAll men are by nature equal and
free.
No one has the right to anyauthority over another without
his consent and all lawfulgovernment is founded upon the
consent of those who are subjectto it.
And he says we have no rightover the Indians, whether within
(12:02):
or without the real orpretended limits of any colony.
That is to say, he's a Democrat, small d, and he believes in
the sovereignty of all peoples.
And he forms a constitutionwith his allies that has
treaties as the supreme law ofthe land and these treaties are
definitely including treatieswith the native nations.
(12:23):
And these treaties aredefinitely including treaties
with the native nations.
The initial memo, in theinitial motion in the
constitutional convention refersto just treaties ratified.
But the language of theconstitution is treaties made or
which shall be madespecifically to include treaties
with the native nations.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
And John Marshall ignores all of that when he
doubles down on moral depravityin Johnson v McIntosh and then
again, even worse, in CherokeeNation v George.
Yeah, that's fascinating, youridea that Marshall jumps over
certain chunks of history thatreally define democracy in a way
you know, to reclaim, you know,the doctrine of discovery as an
(13:14):
original source of, you know,us property law.
It's always fascinated me andI'm going to maybe be a little
unfair because I know your areais not in religion but I just
have to ask what is it aboutChristianity that really becomes
(13:39):
so abusive, intrusive andpersistently so, I would say?
And you know there's a lot ofthings happening around 1492, a
lot of things, and I mean one ofthe things we've sort of been
(14:00):
able to tease out is the Age ofDiscovery is really just an
extension of the Crusades inmany ways, you know.
So I mean it is an openquestion for me.
I just wonder if you have ideasabout it.
I mean, what is this, what isit about Christianity in this
(14:24):
formulation that becomes soviolent and abusive?
Speaker 4 (14:29):
So I would say and this is interesting because I
come to Christianity fromJudaism, I'm baptized in 2006,
in search of a universalism, andwhat I find ultimately is a
false universalism.
But the initial promise thatattracted me was the claim you
know, in Christ there's neitherJew, nor Greek slave, nor free
male and female for all are one.
(14:50):
That's attractive, but theproblem is twofold.
The first is the assumptionthat the body of Christ, the
members of the community, aresomehow Christians rather than
all living beings.
Right, it means that those whoare inside are different from
those who are outside, andthey're going to bring the
language in.
(15:10):
Sepulveda's language in the16th century is drawing on the
gospels.
We will compel them to come in.
That's a quote to reference toLuke 14.
Now, initially that is meant tobe hospitality.
That is meant to be rhetoric,not meant to be hospitality.
That is meant to be, rhetoric,not in any way meant to be
violence, and Sepulveda turns itand makes it violence, although
there had been earlier.
St Augustine had done somethingsimilar with regard to people
(15:33):
already inside the church, butSepulveda takes it.
We're going to compel them tocome in with force and violence.
So partly it's a question ofwho is in, and if you don't have
everybody in from the get-go,then you're going to be abusive
to those who are on the outside.
And when I say everybody in, Idon't mean that people are to be
(15:53):
thinking of themselves asChristians, but any Christian
who wants to be a Christian inmy opinion should look to see
Christ in all living beings andto learn of who Christ is from
all living beings.
If the people coming over onthe ship had sought to learn
about Christianity from thenative peoples, they would have
learned a lot.
I mean.
I'll give you an example.
(16:14):
A friend of mine, jodei Gaudia,of the Yakama Nation, is asked
by a Christian friend of his youknow I'm a child of God, that's
who I am at the deepest level.
Who are you?
And you can hear in thatquestion all sorts of
problematic attitudes.
And Jode pauses for a momentand says of creation, yeah,
right and I think, from aChristian perspective, a sincere
(16:34):
Christian perspective, that isa more honest answer, a more
accurate answer, a more humbleanswer.
A better answer in every way,shape and form than this child
of God formulation.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
A better answer in every way, shape and form than
this child of God formulation.
Oh, it's such a dividing line.
We were working with Jesuitsbecause we repurposed a Jesuit
fort at the place where theHaudenosaunee's Great Law of
Peace was established.
So this was really challengingbecause nobody knew about the
Great Law of Peace.
Really challenging becausenobody knew about the great law
(17:07):
of peace, and it's a far betterstory to be telling than one of
failed conquest.
Actually, the Jesuits were runout in only a few months, but oh
my God you know, Well, just tofocus on peace, right?
Speaker 4 (17:19):
I mean, what do we want in our relations with one
another?
Speaker 3 (17:23):
But we would have priests talking to us and they
thought they were beingunderstanding by just
superimposing the word creatorfor their God.
And I would like, oh mygoodness, no, you cannot do that
.
Your God is hierarchical, Oursis not.
Ours is diverse, it'sever-changing, it's regenerative
(17:46):
in the very water we drink.
We're talking about completelydifferent orientations here and
that very basic, you know.
Effort to try to connect withus was more divisive because, no
, we are not, you.
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
I would say to Phil's question about what there is in
Christianity this is an evendeeper level of what there is.
That's wrong with Christianitythat you're touching on this
notion of the far away up theresomewhere divinity as against.
We are all interconnected andall of us are entitled to
(18:24):
respect and to rightrelationships.
The more horizontal view ofreality and of the fact that
there's an indwelling life ineverything.
That view is suppressed in theaxial age to a large extent and
not just in christianity acrossa host of religions and
(18:45):
spiritual philosophies and thennationalism comes in, I would
say in part as a result of thedoctrine of discovery, and
nationalism then squelches someof this, uh, super hierarchical
stuff, but doesn't replace itwith equality, replaces it with
its own secular hierarchies.
That's how I view the doctrineof Christian.
(19:06):
Discovery, is as a substitutereligion for what Christianity
was claiming to be but was notactually pursuing.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
There is a theology implied in the doctrine of
discovery.
Certainly, I mean, that's notthe work that we would take on.
Necessarily we wouldn't workwithin, say, a specific
denomination or something, butrather uh to to change, say,
their theological positioning ororientation.
But but I can see what you meanin terms of the doctrine of
(19:49):
discovery itself having a kindof implicit theology, a notion
of a God, right, right.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
It's a God that we own it.
It's obscene and you'reobedient to it.
Obedient to it and force otherpeople into obedience to it at
knife point and gun point Right.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So one of the things that Sandy was indicating is
kind of the urgency of theseissues around the doctrine of
discovery and why we'rerevisiting all this history.
It's not something I thought Iwould do when I was in graduate
school, but there is an urgencyto this because you see it
(20:32):
playing out in the world today,to this, because you see it
playing out in the world today,christian nationalism, for
example, like it, has its originin doctrine of discovery,
doctrine of Christian discovery.
I wonder what you think of thatand how you conceive of that
(20:52):
linkage.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
So I think of it in two ways.
One One as an exaggeration ofsomething that is ubiquitous in
even American society at itsbest.
So American society at its bestI still think of in terms of
the way John Trudell puts ittechnologic civilization.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, we love John Trudell.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
The soul of that technologic civilization is
naturalism right and it's best.
That's a sense that those whoare members of the nation are
equal and sovereign.
The problem, of course, is thatall sorts of people are left
out who are not treated as equaland not treated as sovereign.
But that's at its best andthat's just not good enough.
Yeah, that is still coming fromthe notion that we came over
(21:36):
here, we Euro-Christians, and wecan dominate here.
In fact, the laws that involveliving with this land, the laws
of this land, are theinternational laws and usages
that were present among thenative nations here before the
Euro-Christians got here.
That's what valid law is.
So the laws, the teachings ofthe Anishinaabek, for example,
about love, respect, truth,honesty, courage, humility,
(22:02):
wisdom, the teachings thatsurround those words that I just
named, right, that's legalfoundation of just one Native
nation or group of Nativenations, but it, I think, is
compatible with the ontologiesof the Native nations of Turtle
(22:22):
Island generally and it's notcompatible with American law.
American law doesn't rely onthese foundations.
And even if it did rely onthese foundations, it relies on
them through authority, throughdomination, as opposed to
through feeling what the bodypolitic feels is true and how we
(22:43):
should act.
And I take this back to thedebates over genocide in the
1830s, where you have somebodylike Jeremiah Everett who says
that we should be feeling keenlythe injustice that we're about
to perpetrate on the Nativenations.
He's appealing to the Americanpeople to feel, and that appeal
(23:05):
to feeling is an appeal to reallaw, in my opinion.
But when we face our law onwhat the body politic feels of
justice, feels of rightrelations, feels of truth, feels
of honesty, feels of wisdom,that is not how the American
people at their best think oftheir constitution.
(23:26):
So, I think of white Christiannationalism as an exaggeration
of the worst features.
I think even at best it's justnot good enough I mean what's
fascinating about marshall?
Speaker 2 (23:40):
well, sorry, san, did you want to say what's
fascinating to me about marshallis that he utilizes this
catholic uh, these catholicformulations coming out of the
vatican and papal bulls in aprotest nation-building project,
and at the time, of course,there would be no relationship
(24:02):
with Catholics or the Vatican.
That would have been toleratedby the founding fathers in these
early formulations of theUnited States.
And yet theologically, if youwant to put it that way,
theologically he's utilizingthis language for a Protestant
(24:25):
nation.
So it doesn't really matter interms of what kind of
Christianity we're talking about.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
Well, it does matter because he's dishonest.
I mean, in a sense you can saythat all Euro Christians are
dishonest, but there's againthis intensification of it among
the worst elements.
Let me give you three quotes,and that will convey where I'm
coming from.
The first is from John Forsyth,who's a senator from Georgia,
who's the central advocate ofwhat becomes the Trail of Tears,
(24:55):
and he says and this is themost succinct formulation of the
doctrine of Christian discoveryin this period that I know of.
He says all Christendom seemsto have imagined that, by
conveying that immortal lifepromised by the Prince of Peace
to fallen man to the aboriginesof this country, the right was
fairly acquired of disposing oftheir persons and their property
(25:16):
at pleasure.
Okay, that's the extremeformulation of the doctrine of
Christian discovery and that'sthe majority position in the
Congress.
The minority position in theCongress, although it's a close
run thing the vote is 102 to 97in the House of Representatives
the minority position is bestarticulated by Asher Robbins.
He says does our civilizationgive us a title to his right, a
(25:40):
right which he inherits equallywith us from the gift of nature
and of nature's God?
The Indian is a man and has allthe rights of man, the same God
who made us, made him andendowed him with the same rights
, for of one blood hath he madeall the men who dwell upon the
earth.
Now that's an inadequateposition because it's still
saying we can decide what thenational rights of the Native
Nations are on their land.
(26:01):
But it's at least a more honestposition than Forsyth's.
And what does Marshall do whenthese two positions come before
the Supreme Court?
He says if it be true that theCherokee Nation have rights,
this is not the tribunal inwhich those rights are to be
asserted.
If it be true that wrongs havebeen inflicted and still greater
(26:22):
are to be apprehended, this isnot the tribunal which can
redress the past or prevent thefuture.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Do you need help catching up on today's topic or
do you want to learn more aboutthe resources mentioned?
If so, please check our websiteat
podcastdoctrineofdiscoveryorgfor more information and, if you
like this episode, review it onApple, spotify or wherever you
listen to podcasts.
And now back to theconversation.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
This tribunal is the Supreme Court right.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
This is the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court is washingits hands of the Constitution
and because it washes its handsof the Constitution, it changes
constitutional law to this day.
It makes a claim that theUnited States has a right to
dominate the Native Nations.
It has a right to deny or todisregard any treaty with the
Native Nations.
It assumes a position ofsupremacy.
(27:16):
In christian terms, in whiteterms, however you want to look
at it, that persists to this dayas the law of the land, even
though it's not compatible withthe constitution.
But it is.
It is every supreme courtdecision since then.
You read peter dorico'swonderful book federal
anti-Indian Law.
You can see every decisionsince the Marshall Trilogy,
(27:38):
since Marshall's war, and youcan see this dominationist
politics denying theConstitution, denying the Native
Nations their rights, even inour law.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
So we've gotten different takes on the trilogy
in these podcasts, For example,Lindsay Robertson, who wrote an
excellent book on Johnson.
He said that Marshall maybejust sort of stepped in it with
(28:35):
Johnson and then regretted theimplications of the decisions
later on, particularly inWorcester.
So you seem to have a differentkind of perspective.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Yes, I have a very different perspective from that
and I go at length in my bookinto Marshall's dishonesty and I
provide evidence for it.
I know we want to have somebodyto be a hero against Andrew
Jackson or somebody who at leaststands up partially against
Andrew Jackson.
It isn't John Marshall.
John Marshall is accused by thelawyer for the Cherokee.
There are two lawyers for theCherokee Nation in oral argument
(29:02):
in Cherokee Nation v Georgia.
One of them, william Wirt, findsa book that Marshall wrote in
1804, 1805.
It's a biography of GeorgeWashington and in this biography
it talks about the founding ofGeorgia in 1733 and the way the
Georgians, or theEuro-Christians coming over who
will become Georgians, have thischarter from the king and
(29:26):
they're claiming, the Georgiansin the 1830s, that this charter
gives them domination rightsover the native peoples and the
native people's lands.
And what, uh, this lawyerpoints out is that marshall
himself in his book saidalthough they had this charter,
they signed a treaty with thecreek nation to whom these lands
(29:49):
were acknowledged to belong.
Right, marshall deletes thatsentence in later editions of
the book to those lands who areacknowledged to belong.
Oh no, no, we're just going toerase that.
That's one of many examples Igive of his dishonesty.
In Worcester v Georgia hepretends to support the rights
(30:13):
of the Cherokee Nation, but henever talks about their treaty
rights.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Right.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Their treaty rights are rights under the supreme law
of the United States and theUnited States is bound by those
treaties and obliged to complywith them.
And Marshall, carefully,doesn't mention any treaty
rights.
He says they have the rank oftreaty partners.
What does that mean?
It doesn't mean that they'vegot any rights.
They don't have rights, legalrights, in Marshall's framework.
(30:40):
What they have is naturalrights and traditional rights,
and those can be encroached uponby the federal government at
will.
So yes, worcester v Georgia isa slap at Georgia's efforts to
unilaterally pursue genocide.
Georgia is a slap at Georgia'sefforts to unilaterally pursue
genocide.
But it says the Congress,effectively, can pursue genocide
on its own, no problem.
(31:01):
That's how Worcester v Georgiashould be read, in my judgment.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
And then federal Indian law kind of dictates that
Native nations are now underthe guardianship of the United
States.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Right.
This is another key phrase.
What does it mean to be underthe guardianship?
What does the trustrelationship mean?
People talk about the trustrelationship as if it's some
kind of great thing.
The first instance of the trustrelationship in practice in
Cherokee Nation v Georgia is thegenocide of the 1830s.
It's saying we're going totrust the Congress of the United
States to move all of theseNative nations across the
Mississippi and say 25, 20% ofthem are going to die along the
(31:42):
way.
And this is known in advance.
Louis Cass, the Secretary ofWar in the Jackson
administration, writes toJackson in September of 1831,
and he says without adequatepreparations.
To Jackson in September of 1831, and he says without adequate
preparations, great sufferingsmust be encountered upon the
journey and many will doubtlessperish.
And months later one in fiveChoctaw nationals are dead.
(32:06):
And the killing because that'swhat it is, the killing goes on
for year after year after yearin the 1830s.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Fascism.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
This is costing 40% of the national budget.
This is obscenity and weEuro-Christians are largely
unaware of this and unaware ofthe way it's justified by the
Supreme Court and the way ittwists every little bit of our
relations with the Nativenations to this day.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yeah Well, this happened in Europe.
You in the romans, yes, rightacross the country.
Um, you know, many of ourcities in new york state are
named after rome.
I mean, let's you know, it'sjust completely bizarre.
But how, how do some of thefounding fathers embrace the
hudnishoni and and theprinciples of the great law of
(32:56):
peace and they use the symbolismof the clustered arrows to
represent the presidential seal?
It's just a few years after that, the Roman fascist begins a
campaign and on either side ofthe House of Representatives
speaker, you know the house it'slike how does you know it's
(33:17):
right during this time, it kindof makes this shift and our
countries divide it.
And I don't want to sayelections are, you know, a
horrible thing, but theHaudenosaunee were able to
arrive to consensus andagreements on how to proceed,
and yet that was one of thefirst acts the United States
forced on Native nations was tomake them vote, and that's
(33:41):
always like, puts you inopposition.
It's not relationship building,you know, it's a very brash way
that divides families andfriends, and we're seeing that
more today than we have yetsince the Civil.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
War.
I think your comment is verywise.
I think that's exactly right.
What I talk about in an essaythat was published in Dissident
Voice, called RethinkingNationalism and Democracy with a
View from the Shore, is thatdemocracy, as we see it,
democracy and human rights theway the United States advertises
it, is a failed effort to enterinto indigenous history and
(34:15):
culture.
It's an attempt to beself-governing without knowing
what self-government really is,because self-government rests on
ontologies, on ways of knowingmoral truth, and there are many,
many ontologies in theindigenous world, but they all
connect, as far as I understandit, morality and knowledge,
(34:43):
whereas in the Western world,knowledge and power are made to
be interchangeable and moralityis someplace else.
And so if we are going to finda way out of our current dilemma
, we, the world, at this point Ithink we have to move to
voluntarily entering intomillennia of indigenous culture
and indigenous ontologies.
That's the great challenge thatwe face to get free of
(35:03):
technologic civilization.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
That's terrific.
I have a persistent question,though, going back to the 1830s.
Sorry question, though, goingback to the 1830s, sorry, you
know I do want to.
I do want to, you know, getinto the consequences of all
this.
(35:27):
But but you know, oftentimes,you know, the presidency of
Andrew Jackson is presented askind of a coup.
You know around the removalsagainst, you know, the wishes of
Congress and against theSupreme Court.
You know we have a kind ofconstitutional crisis at that
moment, or that's how somepeople would interpret what's
going on.
What I hear is you've got adifferent kind of take on all
(35:50):
that, right?
Speaker 4 (35:51):
Yes, I do.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
That basically Jackson and Marshall are kind of
what, barking up the same tree,sort of.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
Yes, and not just Jackson and Marshall, but the
Congress.
The Congress votes very clearlyfor removal, for the Trail of
Tears, the majority of Congress.
It's close, but there is amajority on the wrong side of
the issue.
But I would say that the thetrajectory of American democracy
(36:21):
.
To come back to Sandy'squestion, at one point has
somebody like Benjamin Franklinsaying we think our manners the
height of civility, they thinkthe same of theirs.
There's an openness, arecognition that the Native
nations have their own concepts,their own ways of doing things
and that we can learn from them.
(36:42):
Have their own concepts theirown ways of doing things and
that we can learn from them.
There is an openness, and thatopenness is connected to the
Enlightenment, obviously, andit's connected to a position on
racial equality that has beensuppressed in the public memory,
that I want to bring forwardand then talk about how that
position is defeated in the1830s.
(37:05):
So, the position is.
This is Congressman James Hill,house of Connecticut, in 1796
in the House of Representatives.
The first principle that islaid down in the rights of man
is that all men are born freeand equal.
It does not say all white men.
He did not believe he said thatthe House would ever admit so
absurd a doctrine as thatdifferent shades in a man's
(37:26):
complexion would increase ordiminish his natural rights.
There is a naivete in thefounding generation as well as
hypocrisy, as well as activeadvocacy for slavery.
That naivete gets squelched.
That naivete had somepossibilities of hope for
understanding other peoples andunderstanding other ways of
(37:50):
being in the world.
It gets squelched in the 1830sby states' rights.
But what are states' rights?
States' rights are the claimthat because some Christians saw
with their magic Christian eyesthis chartered territory, they
own it and can do whatever theywant to the land and its
inhabitants.
That's the hardcore Christiandiscovery basis of states'
(38:11):
rights.
And in the 1830s Georgia issaying we've got the right to
squelch the Cherokee Nation andsquelch the Creek Nation.
Forsyth is explicitly genocidal, he says, if their separate
existence as a tribe isdestroyed by state legislative
enactments, the control of thegovernment of the United States
(38:33):
even over the commerce with themis at an end.
So you've got your constitution, but we've got our state, our
state of Georgia, and we'regoing to commit genocide or
you're going to get these Indiannations off of our land.
That's the threat that Georgiais making, and not just Andrew
Jackson is affected by thisthreat and not just John
Marshall is affected by thisthreat, but John Quincy Adams,
(38:54):
who's the opposition to Jacksonin 1828, after he loses the
election, basically sides withGeorgia.
So it would have been the sameeven if John Quincy Adams had
won in 1828.
The driving force behind thegenocide of the 1830s is the
state of Georgia and the conceptof states' rights and the
(39:15):
concept of Christian discovery,and that sweeps all before its
path.
Path ultimately.
But there is massive oppositionand I want to stress that it is
a fought out issue in this andthe people who are fighting for
some semblance of justice andhonesty are defeated.
Marshall's not one of thosefighting for some semblance of
(39:38):
justice and honesty andJackson's not one of those
people fighting for somesemblance of justice and honesty
, and Jackson's not one of thosepeople fighting for some
semblance of justice and honesty, and Georgia certainly isn't so
this idea of states' rights isreally the coup against
federalism, then it's the coupagainst federalism.
but federalism is John Marshall.
He's as corrupt as states'rights.
(39:58):
People are right, because whatWilson said was that we have our
rights as a people, as asovereign people, under the law
of nations and, ultimately,under God.
We're answerable to the law ofnations, we're answerable to
other peoples, we're answerableto God.
And Marshall says no, we're notanswerable to anybody other
than ourselves.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, right, right other than ourselves.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Yeah, right, Right.
But I'd heard also that theConstitution acknowledges
treaties with Indian nations asbeing the supreme law of the
land.
Writing it in the Constitutionin a way solidified the status
of the federal government.
So, because the states weregaining power and it was
becoming disjointed and therewas no way to unify, that's
(40:47):
completely against what theHaudenosaunee were talking about
, this union of nations comingtogether.
So you've got it's all divided.
I mean, some people are tryingto see through this new
imagining of the Americas andothers are still carrying
forward this violent threat ofthe Roman Empire.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
Right, I think it's an excellent way of putting it
that it's the violent threat ofthe Roman Empire that becomes
the dominant mainstream.
In some sense, it's always thedominant mainstream.
It's challenged and thenthere's a doubling down on moral
depravity.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
So yeah, that's why we've often talked about the
1790 Non-Intercourse Act.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:29):
Right, which is thrown over, it sounds like, by
the kind of states' rightsmovement that you're describing.
That you're describing, youknow, and after all, the
Non-Intercourse Act is there totry to substantiate the federal
government.
You know, over and against.
You know they can't make theselittle deals.
(41:51):
States can't make deals withindividual Native nations and
such.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Because every agreement transaction between
states and Native nations has tobe ratified by Congress.
And that's what that was,repositioning that again.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, fascinating.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
I've got a quote here I want to share with you from
George Washington that I thinkgets at this pretty clearly.
Pretty clearly.
This is Washington in 1789,urging the Senate of the United
States to establish the practiceof ratifying treaties with the
(42:30):
Native Nations.
It doubtless is important thatall treaties and compacts formed
by the United States with othernations, whether civilized or
not, should be made with cautionand executed with fidelity.
So there is somebody I thinkWashington is pretty
hypocritical but incrediblyviolent.
But in spite of the hypocrisyand the violence, at least is
(42:52):
giving lip service to the truththat treaties are the supreme
law of the land.
That is attacked by JohnForsyth in a way that carries
dishonesty.
I mean, forgive me forpoliticizing this by bringing in
Donald Trump, but I thinkForsyth and Trump are peas in a
pot in this.
This is Forsyth's languagebecause he's got to deal with
(43:14):
this question of these treaties,and he says that the president
has made, with the advice andconsent of the Senate, various
contracts with Indians andcalled them treaties is not to
consent of the Senate, variouscontracts with Indians and
called them treaties is not tobe denied.
The various contracts have beenmade with the Indians by states
and individuals under thesuperintendents of the United
States is certain.
They have been submitted to theSenate, voted upon as it had
(43:34):
been called, treaties.
What I assert is that theseinstruments are not technically
treaties, supreme laws of theland, superior in obligation to
state constitutions and statelaws.
Can it be believed that thestern jealousy of the state
governments gave to the UnitedStates the power to use a
miserable fragment of thepopulation of a state to extend
indefinitely their authority andnarrow that of the state
(43:56):
government?
How, then, can a contract madewith a petty, dependent tribe of
half-starved Indians beproperly dignified with a name
and claim the imposing characterof a treaty?
Again, this is just dishonestyand violence.
This is who we are.
At some very deep level, thereare people within us who are
fighting to change that.
(44:16):
The whole hope of theEnlightenment, the whole hope of
the American Revolution, hopeof the american revolution, was
that the american people wouldbe self-governing the way the
native nations areself-governing right that was
the hope and that was smashedvery early on with the emergence
of the state governments, withthe articles of confederation.
there was an effort in theconstitution to try and bring
(44:38):
back in some respect forinternational law, for the law
of nations, for the common good,but by and large the trajectory
has been downhill in terms ofour relations with the Native
Nations all the way from thebeginning.
The notion of progress thatAmericans like to believe in has
(45:01):
no relationship to reality whenit comes to our relations with
the Native Nations.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Yeah, yeah, and I just can't help but wonder the
consequences for the trilogyMarshall.
You know the removals, thisearly period, how it's being
played out today.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
I mean, it seems we're in the middle of, you know
, election season, seems likeit's been going on forever and
we, you know you, just see thesame themes.
It's not so much like historyrepeating itself, it's more like
we have a kind of mythicframework that we're operating
(45:47):
within.
You know, I'll use thereligious language you know, or
some other.
Maybe we're just structurallybuilt in the United States in a
way that, you know, we seem tonot be able to break out of this
kind of pattern.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
I think the way we break out of this is by, first
of all, feeling grief.
I don't think we break out ofthis by fixing it.
I think the presumption that wecould fix anything, especially
without working with otherpeoples, without working with
the Native nations, withoutrecognizing their leadership, is
an obscenity.
We cannot fix things, andthat's the way we tend to go is.
(46:29):
We want to fix things.
But if we could manage to sitwith our own grief at the
injustice we have inflicted onothers, even just for a little
while, it might open us to theidea that there are different
ways of being in the world.
There are different ways ofdoing things.
We might begin to ask somequestions.
That's where my hope is is thatthe American people can come to
(46:51):
sit with the grief of our owninjustice and to think about
what we might do differently inthe world what we might do
differently in the world.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
It's interesting that you mentioned grief because, as
you know, we're in the OnondagaNation territory here in
Syracuse, new York, and OnondagaNation is maybe one of only
three federally recognizedNative American nations of the
575, or whatever it is now thathave rejected the Bureau of
(47:29):
Indian Affairs government, thatstill govern themselves with
their clan representation,govern themselves by the great
law of peace, what's called thelonghouse tradition, and have
done for thousands of years, andtheir process is all centered
(47:52):
around grief, what they callcondolence right in English, the
process of raising leadershipinto their Representatives.
Yeah, the clan representativesinto their positions, their life
positions, is all through theprocess of condolence.
So they I think this is one ofthe more profound aspects of the
(48:17):
Haudenosaunee, and likely inother traditions as well,
because you know, if you know,uh, if you really sit with, as
you say, sit with your grief, uh, around the passing of a person
, or you know um a certainmoment, then that can, that can
(48:39):
lead to new kinds of um, newkinds of relationships.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
Right, I mean, no one really talks about grief yeah.
It's like hidden.
It's hidden from your children.
You know this dominant society.
They refrain from taking theirchildren to funerals.
You know they're told thesemade-up stories even about, like
holidays.
(49:05):
It's all kind of based in liesand avoidance.
We've got a lot to sift throughhere because we've been
educated, all of us now, withsome kind of manipulative
propaganda.
It's, frankly, propaganda.
I was just talking about ourColumbus statue here.
(49:26):
You know it's not retaininghistory.
Nobody knows the history abouthim sailing here on the
doctrines of discovery toannihilate millions of people,
you know, and take all theirwealth and enslave their bodies.
I mean, nobody, that's thehistory.
The other that he's a hero.
That's propaganda, you know.
(49:48):
And are we going to start, youknow, seeing through what's
honorable and it's going tounite us or something that's
just going to subdue anddominate, you know, masses of
peoples and countries and theenvironment.
I mean I don't know how we'regoing to get out of this.
Frankly, it's really terrifying.
Speaker 4 (50:11):
I think part of the reason why grief opens a path
out of it is it takes us out ofour egos, and I think the United
States, I think every peoplewell, every non-Indigenous
people, has an ego, and that egotries to be dominant.
And to the extent that theAmerican people focus on their
(50:34):
state, on their government, onstructures of power and
authority, on the super rich, itdoesn't focus on what really
matters, on what's real.
It's focusing on propaganda, asyou say.
It's focusing on this ego, andthis ego it's not really there.
What's really there in theworld is our relationships with
(50:57):
one another and it's our lovefor one another.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
If we can feel, feel that we can find our way out of
the situation that we're inright, I mean not to just jump
into religion, but it's areligion based on um sin and
guilt yeah you know how, aboutthere questioning, how do we
(51:23):
raise a loving world or familythat's wholesome when it's just
drilled into you?
You have to focus to save yoursoul, on salvation, your
individual salvation.
To cut through all this.
No, I don't think that's goingto do it.
It hasn't so far.
You know we've got to connectwith one another and the earth,
(51:46):
you know, have relationshipsthat are viable and regenerative
and healthy.
Speaker 4 (51:54):
Yeah, I agree with that entirely.
The idea that you can save anego, because that's really what
it is.
It's looking for salvation foran ego rather than salvation for
a true self, because salvationfor a true self, you know, is in
relationships.
Speaker 3 (52:09):
Right, well put.
Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, which are all around us anyway.
Right, I would like to thankyou, stephen, for a really
fascinating conversation.
The book is Arguments OverGenocide, the War of Words in
the Congress and the SupremeCourt Over Cherokee Removal,
published last year, nowavailable in paperback.
(52:33):
Thanks very much.
This has been a terrificconversation.
Speaker 3 (52:38):
Yes, thank you, yes, thank you and good luck with
your work.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Appreciate it you as well.
The producers of this podcastwere Adam DJ Brett and Jordan
Lund-Cologne.
Our intro and outro is socialdancing music by Oris Edwards
and Regis Cook.
This podcast is funded incollaboration with the Henry
Luce Foundation, syracuseUniversity and Hendrix Chapel
(53:08):
and the Indigenous ValuesInitiative.
If you like this episode,please check out our website and
make sure to subscribe.
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