Steven Newcomb: Colonizers attempt to limit our sovereignty

The United States has put in place a system of ideas that precludes the ideas and arguments of our Native nations from ever being able to define the relationship between the United States and our nations. The United States has done this by using the phrase “the law” to label the Christian European ideas and arguments of the past and the present. The United States has made it seem normal for the ideas and arguments of the colonizers to be the sole basis for making the determination that the invasion of our nations and our territories was rightful and justified.

We need to go back through the written record of the ideas and arguments of the colonizers, and identify the main arguments they made so we can oppose those arguments. According to Antony Anghie in his book Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (20004), one argument the colonizers made is quite simple: They argued that they were sovereign, and that our original Native nation were not sovereign.

Did we, the original nations of this hemisphere, decide that we were not sovereign? No. The Christian colonizers did. And who decided that they would decide? They did. Having recognized this, the question becomes: On what basis did the colonizers claim that they would be the ones to decide whether our nations were sovereign or not? According to Professor Anghie, the colonizers said that our ancestors were “pagan” and therefore not sovereign, and they then decided that they, as Christians, were the only ones with the right to be sovereign.

An underlying argument from the past that is still being used today by the United States against our Native nations is this: Our Native ancestors were deemed “pagan,” and Christians get to decide that Christians must always be in control of the power of defining reality when it comes to their interactions and relations with non-Christians.