Steven Newcomb: NFL mascot a symptom of deeper problem in US

In the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Michigan v. Bay Mills Indian Community, handed down May 27, 2014, both the majority and the dissent of the Court explicitly used the word “subjection,” a term for domination, to refer to the United States government’s relationship with our originally free Nations and Peoples. What has been the response from Indian Country? The Court’s use of a framework of domination for its decision apparently hasn’t caused even the slightest emotional ripple among the leadership of Indian Country.

Not one major Indian organization came out and decried the majority of Supreme Court saying that subjection means the “subjection” of our Nations and Peoples to “the will of the Federal Government.” We also have not seen any public challenge of Justice’s Thomas dissent in Bay Mills (joined by Alito, Ginsberg, and Scalia) which said: “Despite the Indian tribes’ subjection to the authority and protection of the United States, this court has deemed them ‘domestic dependent nations’ that retain limited attributes of their historic sovereignty?”

It shouldn’t be that difficult to use the attention being dedicated to the “Redskins” and team mascot issue to also place public focus on a key fact: It is the U.S. government’s Old Testament premised claim of a right of Christian discovery and domination that has led to our Nations being defined by the Supreme Court as “domestic dependent nations.”

Both the majority and the dissent of the Supreme Court in Bay Mills quoted the phrase “domestic dependent nations” from Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) decision. That phrase in Cherokee Nation traces to a sentence in Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823): “They [the Indian nations] occupy a territory to which we assert a title independent of their will…” Notice it doesn’t say that our nations existed free and independent in our own territories. Rather, it says that they ‘occupied’ “a territory” to which the United States asserted “a title.” The Supreme Court said the United States had asserted “a title of discovery” based on a claimed “right of discovery.”