Steven Newcomb: Native law students kept under mind control

For at least the past forty years or so, Native students have been attending law schools in the United States. They have worked hard to learn the ideas and arguments that comprise the non-Indian system of law, a system of law which has been imposed on and used against our original nations. U.S. law schools spend virtually no time teaching Native students to reflect on the original free existence of our ancestors. Nor do the Native law students learn the most effective means of challenging, on behalf of the non-Native, anti-Indian system of “law” on behalf of our original nations.

Native Students who attend U.S. law schools end up having their minds deeply influenced, and, to a great extent, controlled by ideas and arguments that non-Native lawyers, jurists, and scholars have developed for the specific purpose of controlling the very existence of our nations and peoples. It is sad to say, but the law schools mentally condition Native law students to simply accept rather than contest the foundational assumptions, metaphors, and tenets of a system of anti-Indian ideas developed by non-Native intellectuals and judges of the past. These concepts include “plenary power” over Indian nations, the claim of “ultimate dominion” on the part of the United States, and a claimed U.S. right of domination based on fallacious claim that Christians “discovered” lands where non-Christian nations were existing.

When a Native person masters the U.S. federal Indian law system, that person ends up under a form of mind control. The student proudly graduates, only to become, nine times out of ten, a Native practitioner of an anti-Indian system of ideas which, inevitably, ends up being used against our nations and peoples. The resulting mind control hinders not only the ability but the inclination of Native practitioners of anti-Indian U.S. law to spend any time at all contesting or challenging the main non-Native ideas that have been and continue to be used to control the existence of our nations. There are exceptions, but they are merely exceptions to the rule. The question arises: What are we to do about this dilemma?