Steven Newcomb. Photo from Finding the Missing Link
Steven Newcomb (Shawnee / Lenape) of the Indigenous Law Institute declares independence from the centuries of storytelling that have been enshrined by the U.S. Supreme Court as federal Indian law and policy:
John Marshall, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835, was a master story teller. So was his close friend Associate Justice Joseph Story, which is somewhat ironic given Story’s surname. Most people seem to think that the stories told by men such as John Marshall and Joseph Story in their official capacity as Supreme Court justices cease to be stories because their narrative creations ended up being called “law.” This is not the case. There are many kinds of stories: “true stories,” “yarns,” “tall tales,” “made up stories,” “just so stories,” “fictional stories,” and “factual stories” to name just a few. Johnson v. M’Intosh is a peculiar kind of story. In 1823, Marshall, Story, and the other judges on the U.S. Supreme Court agreed upon the Johnson opinion as an official story of the United States government and thus as U.S. “law.” It’s as if the United States government has said of the Johnson ruling, “That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.” Let’s review some of the story’s features: After identifying the question before the court, which was “the power of Indians to give, and of private individuals to receive, a title which can be sustained in the courts of this country,” Marshall began the ruling with a “Once upon a time” opening: “On the discovery of this immense continent.” This presupposes as a fact that a “discovery” of an already inhabited continent did take place. (We’ll leave aside the argument that you can’t “discover” some place that is already well known to millions of people). Marshall continues his story by saying that the continent’s “vast extent offered an ample field to the ambition and enterprise of all.” “The nations of Europe were eager to appropriate so much of it [the continent] as they could respectively acquire,” he wrote. Simply put, the invading nations coveted the lands where other nations were already living and had been for countless generations.Get the Story:
Steven Newcomb: For the 4th of July: John Marshall, Master Storyteller (Indian Country Today 7/4)
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