Steven Newcomb: Dysfunctional system of federal Indian law

What is today called “federal Indian law” in the United States is nothing other than the metaphorical construct of a Christo-European reality system. Even though we are the original nations of this continent and this hemisphere, we have been living for generations under the hypnotic effect of that Christian European belief system with its underlying presumption that it’s the one true reality. It’s as if the dominators have been saying: “You must willingly accept the system of metaphors we have mentally created for your containment; it’s the only Reality, and it’s the Law.”

If we keep replicating and maintaining “federal Indian law dominance” for ourselves, we have only ourselves to blame. Repeating the same dysfunctional, unhealthy reality over and over again and expecting a functional, healthy reality to emerge from that replication is simply another form of craziness. If we consciously embrace the concepts, ideas and behaviors we know result in the same problems we say we want to solve, then how can we blame anyone else for the outcome?

Additionally, the dominating society has devised particular words and phrases for our political integration into its system. Whenever we think, talk, and write about ourselves in terms of the ideas that the dominating society has devised for that purpose, we are working against our own interests. We do this whenever we talk about ourselves in terms of the names and phrases that construct a dominating form of reality for us: “tribes,” “tribal nations,” “domestic dependent nations,” “quasi-sovereign,” “proud to be an American,” “our founding fathers,” “we need to accept the plenary power of the United States,” and so forth.

The more we use such self-diminishing words and phrases, and the longer we refuse to devise alternatives, the more rapidly we are destroying our political distinctiveness as the Original Nations and Peoples of this continent and this hemisphere. Political self-integration works by naming ourselves in terms of the very words the dominating political system has devised as its means of blending our nations and peoples into its predatory body politic.