[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Domination Chronicles Podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm your co-host, Peter Doreco. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm your co-host, Steven Nukum. [SPEAKER_00]: Together Peter and I have 90 years of experience researching, discussing, and writing about indigenous people's issues. [SPEAKER_00]: Our conversations, examine themes such as the original free existence of our native nations and peoples, invasion and colonization.
[SPEAKER_01]: as a claim of a right of domination and civilization as a process and system of domination. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so good morning Steve and I'm happy to have Steve Nukem here with this podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: I imagine they'll be cross-posted to his sub-stack too, but Steve and I have been knowing each other and working to indeed each other for decades now. [SPEAKER_01]: Probably [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, at least 30 years, something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're starting this recording just fresh out of the box here. [SPEAKER_01]: We don't have a lot of plans for this because Steven, I have been, we talk, sometimes daily, sometimes a couple of times daily, sometimes a week will go by, but it's been [SPEAKER_01]: and everything that that means, which means it includes the whole world, basically, and philosophy and history and psychology and so on and so forth.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when we start talking, we range over quite a bit of material. [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to aim to keep this conversation within a reasonable limit for a sub-stack.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess Steve, what I'm thinking of doing, I mean, I gave my little introduction, maybe you want to say something about a work together, but the most recent thing that I want you to say something about is the film that's now being shown on PBS that you help produce and you are actually in about language. [SPEAKER_01]: And so maybe first, if you want to just say some few things [SPEAKER_01]: how we work together, but it's like you to talk about the new films.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, I have a book, Pagan is in the Promised Land that's complimentary to your book. [SPEAKER_00]: Federal anti-Indian law, and we have a documentary movie that Sheldon Wolf child and I made some years ago, almost 10 years ago now, called the Doctrine of Discovery on Masking, the Domination Code, [SPEAKER_00]: conversations together, as you said, have spent quite a few decades, and our friendship has been just foundational to my life and to my work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, and I thank you very much for that. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what life would be without that, you know? [SPEAKER_00]: What is really strange. [SPEAKER_00]: So, these days, I always check in with my friends and say how much they mean to me. [SPEAKER_00]: So, that certainly goes for you, Peter. [SPEAKER_00]: But our new movie is called O'yote Woyaka. [SPEAKER_00]: And the people speak, and it's about the Lakota language.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's co-directed by Bryant High Horse, who's see Chalongu from the Rosewood Reservation, and his nephew George McCollough, and it's a beautiful outcome and very powerful, very heart-wrenching in a lot of ways. [SPEAKER_00]: But the people are determined to make sure that their language continues, and the story is about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also about the so-called boarding schools, the policy of the United States government, and the Canadian government for that matter to take native children away from their families and prevent the transmission of language and culture and spiritual traditions and the whole [SPEAKER_00]: So it's the outcome of that in generations of those policies to kill the Indian saved the man as George Pratt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then it was a Colonel Pratt, I don't know if I was the first Henry Henry there you go anyhow that he he popularized and which is an admission of genocide by the way because the term genocide is the effort to destroy in whole or in part in entire people. [SPEAKER_00]: and certainly the U.S. policies and so-called federal Indian law system are promised upon that aim or war back in the day. [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what they're based on now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a bunch of weird topsy-turvy ideas. [SPEAKER_00]: Anyhow, it's a beautiful film that's being shown on PBS and if anyone has the PBS Passport, I think that's the membership for PBS. [SPEAKER_00]: They can tune into [SPEAKER_00]: or y-a-t-e-e-w-o-y-a-k-e. [SPEAKER_00]: and just type that in there and they'll come right up. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's one of the great documentaries. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to put when we put that info next to it or as an annual to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, my passport, whatever that's called, membership gave that up a long ago. [SPEAKER_01]: But I was able to watch it without a problem. [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know exactly why. [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe the link got sent to me. [SPEAKER_01]: He had that in it. [SPEAKER_01]: In any case, he's available on a mass market platform for viewers to see. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty, it's wonderful.
[SPEAKER_00]: And George McCollough, what a great gift he's given to his uncle, to persevere as a younger person. [SPEAKER_00]: But my daughter's age meant forties, I think, and he just made sure that he [SPEAKER_00]: hit every deadline and just dog and determination got her to accomplish with beautiful cinema photography and sound and the music is fabulous, it's all terrific. [SPEAKER_00]: And the elders that we were able to interview certainly have a very profound, [SPEAKER_00]: world view.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hesitate to say world view, but it is a world view, but it's beyond that. [SPEAKER_00]: In the language itself, when the people come together, they're actually creating an entirely different mental world than exists in English. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think a few people really understand what that's about so that profound wisdom and philosophy built into the language is just amazing. [SPEAKER_00]: And it comes through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the really amazing example that they give a fairly early in the film is Tomcassula, which is sort of conveniently translated grandfather, but which they unpack as being, it is a view of reality, you might say.
[SPEAKER_01]: So beyond a worldview, [SPEAKER_01]: But it includes that because breaking the words, the word down into its constituent parts says that when you use that word, you're actually describing a whole trajectory back into the mystery of existence and your personal connection to it through the person that we would say is your grandfather, the person who is coming from that and who is caring for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So all of that is packed into [SPEAKER_01]: that simple word, sounding simple, when it's translated as grandfather, we think, oh, we're referring to a specific person, oh, yeah, there's my grandfather. [SPEAKER_01]: Or, and I have two of those grandfather's, but within the Lakota language itself, we're speaking about something far more profound than, let's, [SPEAKER_01]: you know, how to put it into English words becomes the problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what I think when you're talking about the language recognition and what the film allows people to see is that this is an effort to climb out from under the attempt at genocide.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when we look at how people's exist today whose languages have just about been rubbed out and many of the languages have been rubbed out by the assimilation process which started heavily with the boarding schools would certainly extends beyond that and I think extends into today.
[SPEAKER_01]: that the language reclamation is happening in many places, some more successful than others, but the effort itself shows the recognition that we are still here and that there's been an effort to rub a salge, but it hasn't been successful so far. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that all of that is captured.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a hard film to watch in the sense that [SPEAKER_01]: The film is reminding us about these histories and it's difficult, and it's difficult in part if I can touch on this because it's done during the time of the lockdowns and the social distancing, and so you can begin to see how there's a
[SPEAKER_01]: a domination to use the word that I'd like to ask you about in a minute, but there's a domination system at work, which is being exemplified in the work of these people to recover from the domination of the boarding schools and assimilation, but also is still an act of part of the global regime of states, to lock people down, to press people apart from each other,
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of that comes back to a viewer who watches this film, which was made during that time, that there's a sense of, oh my God, I remember it wasn't too long ago, that this domination was being exercised on everybody around the planet, and all that mixed together is what I said, and it makes the film hard to watch by the end of the film.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to give away anything, but by the end of film, there's a very amazing statement being made by an elder man who had already earlier described his experiences in the boarding school being whipped. [SPEAKER_01]: Wayne Halloharne Bear and his statement about forgiveness is profound. [SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing and it goes far beyond the situation that he describes in the boarding school for himself. [SPEAKER_01]: It becomes a lesson for every human being.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems to me. [SPEAKER_01]: So there's quite a lot of value in the film. [SPEAKER_01]: quite a lot packed into it. [SPEAKER_01]: Very well done, as you said, professionally, technically, and really exemplary in its truth, and it's adherence to the truth of a people, that's a great noun. [SPEAKER_01]: Can we segue to the word domination?
[SPEAKER_01]: I know that's like jumping right into the middle of the fire here, but you have [SPEAKER_01]: contributed out of this long work that we've done. [SPEAKER_01]: You've contributed a very serious sharpening of the discourse by insisting that we pay attention to the fact of domination and the way in which domination is embedded in language, [SPEAKER_01]: and in cultural actions. [SPEAKER_01]: That's why when I refer to the lockdown, it's an example of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But can you talk to us a little bit about what is it that over the last few years brought you to see so clearly the need for what you call a domination translator of seeing how domination [SPEAKER_00]: The interesting thing is that I had already understood this by the mid-90s.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you go back and look at our Indigenous Law Institute website, which you so graciously and generously maintained and had maintained over such a long period of time, you'll see the Empire Domination Model referred to. [SPEAKER_00]: So at that time, I already had understood that pattern, what I didn't have is the confidence [SPEAKER_00]: And there was a psychological something that I had to overcome to get myself to begin to speak about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now, all these years later, I have made that sharpening process that very insightful way of zeroing in on that concept and helping people to understand
[SPEAKER_00]: English as one example, I don't know if there are others, but English for sure, English is an operating system of domination, because you look at all these terms that are synonymous for domination, that people are using every single day, and they don't even notice it, because there are synonyms for a concept that is not active in English.
[SPEAKER_00]: listen to people speak and you'll hear them talk about oppression, racism, white supremacy, all kinds of negatives that they're identifying as problems, very, very seldom do ever hear anyone speak of domination in an ordinary conversation, in everyday conversation. [SPEAKER_00]: And so when you realize that civilization, state, sovereignty, [SPEAKER_00]: ascendancy, dominion, property, empire, and government are eight terms that are synonyms for domination.
[SPEAKER_00]: It basically is like the binary code of computer science. [SPEAKER_00]: The zeros and ones repeated over and over and over again give us the opportunity to have a conversation like this vis-a-vis this technology and the algorithms and everything else that go into this type of technology [SPEAKER_00]: but we're not thinking about that operating system, we're just having a conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so once we become hyperconscious of the fact that domination is the premise, the claim, I wanna put it this way, the claim of a right of domination is a presumption on the part of the domination called the United States of America, or whatever state you wanna call it, the state of domination called Canada. [SPEAKER_00]: if you want to talk in international terms about a state.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you understand that, then there's something about reality that shifts because you realize, oh, my gosh, there it is over there, there it is there, there it is there, and it's just constant once you become hyperconscious of it. [SPEAKER_00]: So most people have no understanding what I'm talking about and it takes a while, but teaching the course [SPEAKER_00]: at the Isle of School of theology for a couple of terms now, just completing up the second term of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: The students become very well aware because I'm using what I call the domination translator, which is a simple technique. [SPEAKER_00]: Take a term for domination, such as property, put the word property there, and then put the word domination in brackets and red lettering afterwards, so that it trains the brain, the mind, to make that association.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once people become very much aware of that, it's a whole different insight and understanding of the nature of the reality that has taken over the entire globe. [SPEAKER_00]: And so because it is an organizing principle of the planet, the claim of a right of domination, and you use the term just a phrase, but just a bit ago, the having to do with the states of the planet, the states of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: The states of domination would be a way to complete [SPEAKER_00]: that phrase. [SPEAKER_00]: So the of domination is always out of focus because people say down with the system, back in the 60s, there was that slogan, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, they had said down with the system of domination, it would have been the complete thought, but that's what's out of focus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So one of the features of English is that we speak in metonemies or synlecticies, meaning the part that stands for the larger [SPEAKER_00]: And then when we complete that phrase of domination, then we complete the, you know, we have the holistic understanding rather than the partiality. [SPEAKER_00]: So these are some of the things that we're up against.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think making that clear to people, enabling people to become a hyper-aware, hyper-conscious of what we're talking about gives a different insight into what we're really up against.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and I think that thank you for talking about all of that, but I think one example you talked about people talking about racism as, and that's a negative term, and so if you were saying race race domination, then you would be saying something about what is the phenomenon actually about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it occurs to me that this and we're making them make a little shift here right now, but here's to me that the focus, the persistent focus on race, raceism as the explanation for all bad things that are going on right now is not only missing, but what is it that is raceism? [SPEAKER_01]: Where is the domination?
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you try to identify the domination as it's simplistically done, oh, it's white people versus, you know, so-called people of color, then you miss the fact that there's a, the system, if we just say the economic system, the economic and political system that is being involved here, [SPEAKER_01]: also affects so-called white people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I just read something about the corporations economic domination over people of color and so on and so forth and I'm thought immediately about what about all those miners in West Virginia that we're mostly white, not necessarily all white, [SPEAKER_01]: Um, but what about the white workers that are pressed? [SPEAKER_01]: And so I know there are people say, oh, well, that's, they aren't depressed as much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what are we talking about by focusing on the domination system? [SPEAKER_01]: We begin to see what is the target of our concern. [SPEAKER_01]: The target is not somebody with a different skin color. [SPEAKER_01]: The target is a system of organization. [SPEAKER_01]: of domination organization, which is in operation, no matter what color person is at the helm.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we can have a so-called black president of the United States that black president of the United States is the chief executive officer of a massive system of domination.
[SPEAKER_01]: And another example would be if we switched to gender, [SPEAKER_01]: You can have somebody named Margaret Thatcher who becomes the prime minister of the ancestor, or it's not the answer to the result of the British Empire, which spanned the globe with the system of domination long ago, and still has residual powers like that. [SPEAKER_01]: And the fact that this is a woman did not suddenly mean this is not a system of domination anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: that it did not mean so if people say so we're putting a woman and putting a black person and this is really progress from the point of view that your domination system or domination and translator provides, we can say, no, there's really been no change here. [SPEAKER_01]: We put a different color paint on the wall but it's the same structure building. [SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the things that makes it difficult to make the move that you're suggesting must be made.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when try agree to see this systemically as as frames of domination, one of the reasons it's difficult is because as you said, this is out of sight of people in the use of the language. [SPEAKER_01]: So people can continue to talk about something without actually talking about what has to be talked about.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a puzzle there which you and I have and others have been working on for a while in this specific field of so-called federal Indian law which you know as you know my book says and we both now understand as a federal anti-Indian law and even in that even in some of the latest discourses have been gone on the [SPEAKER_01]: Fundamental claim of domination of owning the land is set aside. [SPEAKER_01]: It's usually not talked about. [SPEAKER_01]: It might be mentioned.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then the discourse shifts into race theory again. [SPEAKER_01]: As if the thing to do here is to just somehow recognize that, oh, there's people with reddish colored skin and we have to treat them somehow more equally, quote, unquote, under the constitution, which, of course, is saying that they're actually acquiescing to the claim of domination that is [SPEAKER_01]: in the constitution that is the constitution and an even deeper claim, which is not based in the constitution.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's based on the doctrine of Christian discovery. [SPEAKER_01]: And so that that deeper domination framework is missed. [SPEAKER_01]: And when the discourse is just about skin color and so on.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess one of the things I would say here is that when you miss that, you really [SPEAKER_01]: But we're going to where and in a sense which you've done, you're participating in the success of the assimilation project so that rather than talking about the fundamental claim of a right of domination.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about the superficial aspects of, did these people get the same amount of funding for the Indian Health Service on an equal basis as, you know, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is? [SPEAKER_01]: And those, I'm going to say that's not an important issue, Indian Health, I'm saying Indian Health is an important issue, but if we connect it to the fundamental framework of the claim of right of domination, then we'd have some possibility of some traction. [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, on the other part, [SPEAKER_00]: of the challenges that English maintains, the system of domination while it hides it. [SPEAKER_00]: He's unconsciously hides it. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's being perpetuated and perpetrated at the same time as it's being cloaked by these other synonyms. [SPEAKER_00]: So you're not, when you think, you could probably give the word dominion to a million people. [SPEAKER_00]: Come up, oh, yeah, that's domination.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you could put the word property in front of a million people. [SPEAKER_00]: 10 million people for that matter. [SPEAKER_00]: And how many of them would ever say, oh, yeah, that's domination, probably none of them. [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a reason for that, but what is that reason? [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that it's just one of these oddities of the English language that hasn't been noticed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's a statement I make in my book, [SPEAKER_00]: So while we're focused on racism, what are we missing? [SPEAKER_00]: There's a bunch of things back here. [SPEAKER_00]: I can see it up from the screen there, but ordinarily I don't see what's behind me. [SPEAKER_00]: So what I'm focusing on is here, but that doesn't mean that's all there is. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just what we can be talking about orange is right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then suddenly you switched cars and just that quick, oranges go out of focus and now we're on to something else. [SPEAKER_00]: that is so extraordinary in the way that reality gets created and maintained. [SPEAKER_00]: So the normative process, what happens is domination becomes normal and normative and ordinary because it's viewed as things that are just every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So domestic violence, all the time pick up constantly, pick up books that have to do with topics that would [SPEAKER_00]: obviously lead to the theme of domination, such as domestic violence, look through the index and never see the word domination. [SPEAKER_00]: I do that with all kinds of books, how have they got an awareness of this and it could be a book on racism? [SPEAKER_00]: And I look through there and there's no mention of domination.
[SPEAKER_00]: How can that even be possible? [SPEAKER_00]: Was very possible because it's out of focus within their understanding of that particular analytical framework. [SPEAKER_00]: to a great extent, the obsession with race, you know, call it that, the matter of race is something that is basically diverting our attention away from that, which we ought to really be focused upon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it makes it seem as if, oh, it's the use of the color spectrum, and only this part of the color spectrum is virtuous and got it going on. [SPEAKER_00]: And this whole other side of the color spectrum, [SPEAKER_00]: universally as somehow negative. [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's a very sloppy shallow way of thinking about the complexity of these issues. [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'd say yes to all of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And another example is if people are talking about equality, so just to focus specifically on the position of the original peoples of this land, vis-à-vis the constitution, the real position of indigenous peoples has nothing to do with the constitution. [SPEAKER_01]: The original peoples, as you have used the phrase from looking from the shore, these people were already here.
[SPEAKER_01]: when the intruders came, and the structure that the intruders built was a structure of domination, and when we begin to see it that way, then we say, well, so if we look at the situation today, so the real problem is that the native people are not equal under the Constitution, what that translates to, using the domination translators, they're not equally dominated.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, maybe they're more dominated, or maybe there's other people who are less to them, but there are gold for time by the way, everybody ought to be equally dominated here. [SPEAKER_01]: Now, that gets inverted because people say, oh, what we're talking about is equally free, they should all be equally free. [SPEAKER_01]: But the people were free before there was a constitution.
[SPEAKER_01]: And freedom in a sense, if we think about it, this is gets to be, you can get people incendiary when you're talking about this. [SPEAKER_01]: The Constitution is not the source of freedom. [SPEAKER_01]: The Constitution sets up a government in brackets system of domination. [SPEAKER_01]: And if you read the discussions that were happening in 1787, [SPEAKER_01]: to create that constitution.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all quite explicit that there were people at that time who were very clear about this. [SPEAKER_01]: We don't need a central government and there were other people saying, oh, we definitely need a central government. [SPEAKER_01]: Say, we're talking about how to fine-tune systems of domination that were either in effect or they were being proposed at that time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you talk about the original free existence of native peoples, which is a phrase again, I really appreciate [SPEAKER_01]: You realize that actually it's to say let's get out from under this thing called the Constitution. [SPEAKER_01]: I mean that's what the treaty system is really about is that you have independent peoples negotiating with each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that has been [SPEAKER_01]: whisted in the system of federal anti-Indian law to say, oh, that's just a particular way that this group of people get to deal with the U.S. government. [SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't really mean anything. [SPEAKER_01]: In terms of fundamental vibe, does not mean they're free from the system of domination. [SPEAKER_01]: It means this is just a particular way they participate in the system of domination. [SPEAKER_01]: And the U.S. has made that clear.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was under Obama when the U.S. was finally embarrassed [SPEAKER_01]: Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which we could talk about as yet another example of cloaked domination, but in any case, [SPEAKER_01]: that document talked about the right of free prior and informed consent before the government, the states could do anything on native people's lands. [SPEAKER_01]: And that has been translated into, oh, we'll just have a consultation with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Obama was very clear about that. [SPEAKER_01]: So we agree with this UN document, [SPEAKER_01]: But he had the State Department issue a signing statement saying we just want to be clear that consent doesn't mean that they really have to agree. [SPEAKER_01]: And I was thinking, whoa, you talk about understanding English, you mean the word consent doesn't actually mean agree, what does it mean? [SPEAKER_01]: is to have any meaning at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're seeing the twisting of ordinary English words, all in the service of the perpetuation of a more or less invisible system of a based on a claim of a right of domination. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_00]: And the thing is that what you were saying previously, we don't need a central government.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now imagine people saying, well, we don't really need a central [SPEAKER_00]: They were using that, oh, you hear people constantly say, well, our government, all right, our government. [SPEAKER_00]: If they were saying our domination, how strange that would sound, our domination, now we're claiming that we're participants, we're willing participants in the system of domination and we're perfectly okay with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But people don't, when they don't realize that it's domination, they're referencing, when they use the word government, [SPEAKER_00]: normal and unobjectionable, and so that consent implied in all that our government is, I'm actually an integral part of this thing called government, as a citizen, as a participant, but I don't recognize that it's a domination.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I have the same sense of it, [SPEAKER_00]: as being a willing participant, if it was explicitly acknowledged as a system of domination, what is it? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, our government, our domination is a democracy, and I mean, suddenly your head starts to kind of come apart in some really strange sense, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because your whole view of reality begins to shift the cognitive dissonance that occurs [SPEAKER_00]: And just shifting that word government to domination, which actually is what it is, go over men, put a T on the end, or go over the state or condition of going over others, M-E-N-T means the state or condition of, and you can break it apart like that. [SPEAKER_00]: So, [SPEAKER_00]: It's not an interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, now you had the, you sometimes quote one of the people bulls about thanking him from whom all Dominations, I don't know the way, but it's, it's, it's, we, I only have the English memorize, but the English translation, but we trust in him or have confidence in him. [SPEAKER_00]: Confident is is the Latin word, we have confidence in him from whom empires and governments. [SPEAKER_00]: and all good things proceed.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what got me on to the understanding that governments means domination's plural, singular government means domination. [SPEAKER_00]: Because I was looking in the, the, was a Carnegie Institute, the, oh my goodness, my brain. [SPEAKER_00]: But anyway, the book that the people both are published in is, [SPEAKER_00]: you have the Latin and the English available to you. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm reading this English and I got curious, well, what's the Latin for this word governments?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I went and compared and I found it, oh my goodness, don't miss the oneness, dominations. [SPEAKER_00]: So we trust in him from whom empires and dominations and all good things proceed. [SPEAKER_00]: All the good things that come from empires and domination and meaning riches and wealth, right? [SPEAKER_00]: And power. [SPEAKER_00]: That was a staggering thing to realize. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's a theology of domination.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can only understand that if you bother to go through the language of the Vatican, people, documents of the 15th century and get deep into that. [SPEAKER_00]: So to, according to their plan, we as native people are not even supposed to be here anymore or not have any sense of awareness of ourselves to be delving into all this type of information. [SPEAKER_00]: Yet here we are. [SPEAKER_00]: ideologies and their systems of meaning and so forth that is quite remarkable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, which brings us to language back, circling back to the beginning is that while the Lakota and others, I know Jesse Littledo for example, working with Wampanag, there are examples of recovering languages. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that maybe there's a problem here. [SPEAKER_01]: We need [SPEAKER_01]: recover and an uncover that would be sort of like parallel projects. [SPEAKER_01]: Let's see what's really behind.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you read that when you have the notion of the people bull, which just to remind the listeners here today, that's part of the ingredients that went into the United States Supreme Court decision Johnson being Macintosh saying that the U.S. was going to adopt this rule of Christian discovery.
[SPEAKER_01]: and therefore it was going to carry out its claim to own all the land because that was precisely what was being the claim it was being made in the paper bulls that the Pope owned the world that [SPEAKER_01]: that God had given the pope the ownership position, the top position and ownership slash domination.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so of course, the pope is gonna celebrate these systems of domination and the people who whom the pope was authorizing the Spanish and the Portuguese specifically and these bulls, they were being sort of passed down like a sort of like an inheritance, like I'll give you this piece of it, you can have it. [SPEAKER_01]: and sender my domination as pope, but you'll get the lesser domination.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so these are wonderful things, empires and domination's slash governments. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think we see that the Supreme Court adopted that and that that has never been changed. [SPEAKER_01]: That's still, that case is still regarded as good law and a lot of the critique that's going on in the field of the so-called federal Indian law recognizes that there's a serious deep problems here, but for some reason they hesitate to touch that domination called property ownership.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll talk about [SPEAKER_01]: other kinds of forms of the domination and it's become so embedded that it's kind of like if you were to take what you just said that you know government is domination and people say well geez I mean what would happen if there were no traffic lights I mean the government maintains the traffic lights that we'd have chaos it's a good thing we have this good thing we have to sit and wait for light bulbs to turn on enough
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, good thing we have this vast system of electricity grid that helps the light bulbs work and burn so we can see otherwise we wouldn't know what to do. [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, that was, that was, that is simply the level that's why Philip Deer said that the, you know, the American people are the civilized so-called people are so confused. [SPEAKER_01]: They need lights on poles to tell them when to stop and when to go. [SPEAKER_01]: They can't figure that out for themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, fine. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think it's funny to think you have to have domination to have street lights. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's what I think is a prerequisite. [SPEAKER_00]: You know, but your larger point is interesting, because what it leads me to talk about is that I believe we have to slow down. [SPEAKER_00]: everybody wants to hurt. [SPEAKER_00]: We've got to hurry up and deal with this situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's better to just slow down and take it very meticulously, take it step at a time. [SPEAKER_00]: But most people don't have the patience for that. [SPEAKER_00]: And the benefit that we've had of all the decades examining all this language and these records and the thought processes and so forth,
[SPEAKER_00]: The arguments that have been put forth by institutions, intellectuals, working in institutions, such as the Supreme Court, those ideas, when we delve into them very carefully, and in depth, then things pop out for us that others gloss over, and so we can have a close reading of something and we can have a very general reading and then a close explanation,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a very detailed explanation, a very general explanation, and I think that's where our work is quite different, because we pay attention to the fact that Marshall gave the royal charges of England as examples of ample evidence of the patterns that he was talking about. [SPEAKER_00]: given to John Cabot and his sons to go across the ocean. [SPEAKER_00]: And for many, many, many, many years, I wanted to get my hands on the Latin, the original Latin Cabot Charger.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I could never find it. [SPEAKER_00]: That where did I end up finding it? [SPEAKER_00]: It was in the book published by Congress or under Order of Congress by the government printing office that talks about the organic laws [SPEAKER_00]: So here are these foundational documents that led her to Columbus from the King and Queen of Spain, the Papal Bowl of 1493, and the John Cabot Charter in both English and Latin.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I go into the Latin and I say, oh, the King is warning the cabbets to get the jurisdiction and dominium tea to them, or tea to them dominium. [SPEAKER_00]: I can't ever remember which order they are in, but it's the domination title. [SPEAKER_00]: He wants the cabbage to get for him, the king, the domination title, and the jurisdiction which means he doesn't have it by his own admission, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There he's admitted that he doesn't have it if he wants someone else to go and get it for him. [SPEAKER_00]: That's an amazing profound thing, but unless you go slow enough and meticulously enough through these documents, you're never going to get to that insight.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the significance is can be exemplified in the fact that I was kicked out of the Supreme Court around 2004, I think it was, by asking a question about Johnson versus McDosh, I went to the office of the clerk of the Supreme Court and asked to interview one of the justices of the Supreme Court as a reporter or writer for Indian country today. [SPEAKER_00]: And the clerk said, well, which one? [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, well, could be any of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, I want to ask about the 1823 Supreme Court ruling Johnson versus McIntosh that says that the first Christian people to discover lands and have it by natives who are heathens have the ultimate have the right to assume the ultimate dominion to be in themselves. [SPEAKER_00]: And she said, no one can speak beyond the law.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, what is a native person I can't come here and ask about a Supreme Court ruling that says that the first Christian people to discover lands [SPEAKER_00]: natives who are heathens have a right of ultimate dominion over that land and she said no one can speak beyond the law shall I are you going to leave or shall I have you removed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trouble maker yeah I take I'm very happy you talked about slowing down I often speak so fast and I jump from one kind of cartoon illustration to another so the red-like green light I I owe that to Philip Deer but really [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not encouraging people to go crazy in their cars. [SPEAKER_01]: There's enough craziness in cars already.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I'm saying is let's look at the examples of the way in which our lives have become assimilated to being dominated, to being told to do. [SPEAKER_01]: And thanks. [SPEAKER_01]: There are intersections where I wouldn't dare move through without waiting for that light to change because everybody, including me, has been conditioned to know what those lights mean. [SPEAKER_01]: And there are other situations in which the light is totally extraneous.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are days before lights, I mean, old enough to remember when there would be police offices in intersections. [SPEAKER_01]: And the police officers paid attention what was actually happening in the intersection and directed traffic that way. [SPEAKER_01]: It was not automatic. [SPEAKER_01]: They didn't stand there and count to 100 and then turn and stand the other way. [SPEAKER_01]: They just hooked charge. [SPEAKER_01]: There was a leadership at that point.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could say that police officers was dominating that. [SPEAKER_01]: But then here we are with nominations within nominations because the automobile was dominating the landscape. [SPEAKER_01]: and the dynamo bill corporations were dominating transportation. [SPEAKER_01]: So this is not, this is like an endless inter-connected system.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I pick out an example like that, it's just as a way of saying, here, any one of these places can be an entry point to talking about what's really going on, what is reality, who am I, as Joe Day likes to say, are Yakima Collig, that you start off with identity, [SPEAKER_01]: Who am I? [SPEAKER_01]: What am I? [SPEAKER_01]: Where did I come from? [SPEAKER_01]: Where am I going?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then larger the the whole body of people, you know, what is what isn't why these are fundamental questions. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, where do you start? [SPEAKER_01]: You can start almost anywhere you start with the lights on the pole you start with a book that you find in a library that was published by order of Congress which admits [SPEAKER_01]: the theoretical basis of a claim of a right of domination. [SPEAKER_01]: So you can start deep in the library.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can start while you're sitting in your car in intersection. [SPEAKER_01]: You can start there's so many points of entry. [SPEAKER_01]: And once it starts unraveling, it's kind of like the ball of wool that has been knitted into this sweater of domination, begins that sweater begins to come apart. [SPEAKER_01]: And you'll be able to see, wow. [SPEAKER_01]: it's very interesting. [SPEAKER_01]: It's all interconnected.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you move slowly enough as you're saying, you're not going to do anything foolhardy or rash like saying, oh, it's all domination. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't care. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to go take my neighbor's barbecue pit because I want it. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not their property. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to go use it. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to rush through this intersection. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to go crash into the court building.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are all crazy actions. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's an important point [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that there are ways in which people could use some of this information to rationalize behavior that is not beneficial. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I come back to our original instructions, our teachings as indigenous or original peoples, that basically can be stated very simply as behavior and a manner that's beneficial to ourselves one or another in all life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where the domination system does not do that. [SPEAKER_00]: It only goes for profit. [SPEAKER_00]: It only goes for that which will increase, riches and wealth and power. [SPEAKER_00]: And as a result of that, it doesn't have any concern with longer term consequences.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if a river is being poisoned, if a waterway is being poisoned, if such is in Flint, Michigan and all the lead in the water, the lead in the children, as a result of the lead in the water, [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody's held responsible. [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody cleans it up. [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a persistent problem. [SPEAKER_00]: And to me, that's a direct consequence of domination. [SPEAKER_00]: So these are very practical types of outcomes and consequences of what we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, if you went to Flint, Michigan and asked all kinds of people there, do you think any of them would just bring up the word domination as part of the mix? [SPEAKER_00]: I doubt it. [SPEAKER_00]: because it's just not part of people's ordinary thinking or a way of speaking. [SPEAKER_00]: And so then we can begin to catalog all of the consequences of domination.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just go through and just, I mean, we could have examples of domination and have this endless listing of massive devastation of ecological systems and the poisoning of waters, the poisoning of our bloodstreams [SPEAKER_00]: all the toxic substances that are being put into what's called food.
[SPEAKER_00]: This artificial hyper-processed, I'll call them foods, but they're not nutritious, they're not beneficial, they're not building people's health, they're actually destroying people's health, yet they're still called food.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like Corbant Harney, you know, he said that water came to him and said some day, [SPEAKER_00]: And you'll believe it's water, but you won't be able to drink it, because it's not going to be water, because there's so much toxicity in there that you'll be full, full issue of you actually drink drink that, right? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what has happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: So anyway, there are so many ways to talk about this, but I want to come back to your term entry point. [SPEAKER_00]: If we had not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Gone into the Johnson versus McIntosh ruling in the way that we did with this deep, deep determination to solve a problem of mystery, a puzzle, and reading it over and over and over obsessively and breaking down the sentences and going into the etymology of the words and so forth, we wouldn't be where we are today in terms of this conversation and the understandings and insights that we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's where people miss, [SPEAKER_00]: The opportunity, the thing, oh, yeah, that's just Indian issues. [SPEAKER_00]: That's just indigenous people's stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: And they put us over in some, you know, bracket off to the side, as if we're not important and the issues are not important. [SPEAKER_00]: But they are the most important issues of all, because they're the foundational issues for this entire part of the globe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's on all kinds of levels. [SPEAKER_00]: So it's to their own detriment that they don't take that seriously. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, foundational issues makes me think of the word radical. [SPEAKER_01]: So somebody hearing us talk to the, they're very radical. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, the root and the meaning of radical it means going to the root. [SPEAKER_01]: That's all. [SPEAKER_01]: It's very simple. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like go to the foundation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you talked about original instructions. [SPEAKER_01]: Those are a kind of a root of a people. [SPEAKER_01]: So somebody went, I'm just responding to your notion. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, I'm not Indian. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to really think too hard about all this. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, no, I'm sorry. [SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about [SPEAKER_01]: stuff that is basic to what does it mean to be a human being? [SPEAKER_01]: That's not.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does it mean to be a human being? [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I quoted Joe Day, you know, what is what isn't why we're talking about reality here affecting all people. [SPEAKER_01]: This is why this is beyond any discussion of racism or sexism or some otherism. [SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about something that encompasses all of that and the same time is obscured by all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and even the term human gets us into a whole [SPEAKER_00]: because people assume that they know what that term means. [SPEAKER_00]: But any type of meaning is context dependent. [SPEAKER_00]: So in other words, we have to look at the context within which that term is being used. [SPEAKER_00]: And that's going to differ from one context to another, very likely anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the word human, a lot of native people, [SPEAKER_00]: to the point of trying to annihilate them, they automatically gravitate toward the word human. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm a human being, God dammit, you know? [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's an indignation, you know, I should, it should be understood that I deserve to be treated a certain way because I'm in that category of humans as well, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And, but then I came across that Supreme Court of California decision from 1930 called [SPEAKER_00]: city of San Diego versus Kuyamaka water company. [SPEAKER_00]: And in the midst of the decision, the court is going back over the history of the Spanish colonization. [SPEAKER_00]: And the court says the only thing existing in California when the Spaniards arrived was a state of barbarism.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then if you take that at face value and you say, okay, so they weren't, they either were not human at all from [SPEAKER_00]: or they were only partially human by what means where they become fully human.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, given the Spanish Catholic mission system, they have to be stripped of their free existence, baptized, given a Christian name, and then forced under the torment, misery, and suffering inflicted by the soldiers and the priests to build the massive mission structures. [SPEAKER_00]: And now, once they're under that, [SPEAKER_00]: control and that domination now they're on their way and they're undergoing the process of becoming fully human.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how does that change our understanding of the word human in that in that case? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Isn't that something? [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: Then if you take that and you say, well, wait a minute. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: That's intense. [SPEAKER_00]: In that context, the word human would mean living under domination.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [UNKNOWN]: Yep. [SPEAKER_00]: Now that's not the only way to interpret the word, but it's a very important specific context that ought to be examined and taken very seriously. [SPEAKER_00]: When you look at the universal declaration of human rights, the third-pramble paragraph says that human rights should be enshrined or upheld by the rule of law so that man will not be compelled [SPEAKER_00]: to rebel against tyranny and oppression to words for domination is not interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that could mean because upholding human rights in the rule of law will end tyranny and oppression. [SPEAKER_00]: So there won't be any need to rebel against it. [SPEAKER_00]: Or it'll be a red herring, get people it'll give them something to focus on other than the root cause of tyranny and oppression.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're approaching now or and but I'm so happy we've had the chance to do this kind of conversation and recorded we have these conversations so often and they're just they benefit us and then they come out in our work in their ways, but so I'm very happy we had this but I'm also wanting to say we're we're just touching on something that could be another hour, which is the notion of rights what are the rights.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you break that down, rates is essentially still tied to a system of domination. [SPEAKER_01]: And saying this system of domination has a list of things. [SPEAKER_01]: And this is a list of things that it is going to give us. [SPEAKER_01]: And we have certain rights if we didn't have these rights, then what? [SPEAKER_01]: Then we would just be dominated.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the system of domination is what is determining whether or not the so-called right exists and so-called enforcing. [SPEAKER_01]: But I hesitate to say anymore because we're going to mark off [SPEAKER_01]: And this, this is probably a really good place to leave it, talking about another foundational word. [SPEAKER_01]: So Steve, one of them, see your face, thank you very, very much.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll get this work together and I'll put a couple of links around it, such as to the film that we started talking about and probably some other information. [SPEAKER_01]: Great. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Peter. [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much. [SPEAKER_01]: Bye bye. [SPEAKER_01]: See you all. [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to the Domination Chronicles Podcast. [SPEAKER_01]: Our website is DominationCronicles.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please like and subscribe on whatever platform you listen to or watch. [SPEAKER_00]: And remember to like our YouTube page DominationCronicles.com. [SPEAKER_01]: When we reach 500 likes on YouTube, each of us will give away one of our books, Pagan's in the Promised Land and Federal Anti-Indian Law. [SPEAKER_00]: and download the show notes at DominationCronacles.com. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much.