Steve and Peter argue that “tribal sovereignty” is an oxymoron when it is defined by federal anti-Indian law as “limited sovereignty” or as sovereignty that the United States has not yet extinguished. Drawing on definitions of sovereignty from Jean Bodin and Sterling Edmonds, they explain that sovereignty means a claim of supreme and unlimited authority. If Native nations are said to be sovereign only to the extent that the United States permits, then the phrase no longer describes free and independent existence. It describes domination.

The conversation turns to Felix Cohen’s Handbook of Federal Indian Law, often treated as the “Bible” of federal Indian law, and examines how its framework converts original Native independence into a legal system of U.S. supremacy. Steve and Peter also discuss treaty rights, land claims, religious freedom, consultation, “federal lands,” and the danger of accepting the opponent’s premise.

The episode concludes with a discussion of the Pe’ Sla / Black Hills drilling controversy and how legal and environmental advocacy can unintentionally reproduce the very domination framework it seeks to resist.

Resources mentioned:

Felix Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law

Pe’ Sla drilling analysis

Complaint filed in the Pe’ Sla case

latest costume of “reconciliation”. Bruce is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation, descended from the Red River Métis. His law firm, First Peoples Law, represents Indigenous Peoples across the continent.

The discussion delves into the disingenuous framing, exploring how the term "rule of law" was weaponized historically and remains a tool for domination. Key themes include renaming settlers accurately, understanding the legal system's role in colonialism, and recognizing the philosophy of domination that underpins the "Empire of Liberty."

Newcomb and d'Errico then place Tee-Hit-Ton alongside Brown v. Board of Education (1954). At first glance, Brown, which repudiated “separate but equal,” appears to move against racial domination. But we explore how both cases, in different ways, served U.S. Cold War ambitions and a broader project of global control—over people, land, and resources such as the timber taken from Tlingit territory.

Drawing on cases, commentary, and human rights documents, this episode reveals how legal “progress” and legal repression can advance the same imperial trajectory.

We focus on the way the US claim of “a right of domination” under federal anti-Indian law is both visible and invisible in the majority opinion (authored by Justice Gorsuch).

The conversation traces how colonial powers misread Indigenous Peoples’ non-dominational ways of life, how federal anti-Indian law grew from that mindset, and how domination shaped everyday concepts such as time, space, matter, and number. By contrasting quantum openness with imposed structures like time zones, they highlight what was lost—and what remains possible—when Indigenous free existence is recognized on its own terms.

This episode invites listeners to rethink existence itself and to see how new stories can open pathways beyond domination.

Topics include:

• Quantum theory and the meaning of free existence
• How colonizers misunderstood Indigenous relational life
• Time zones and the mechanics of domination
• Space, time, matter, number as tools of control
• Why federal anti-Indian law is a continuation of civilization’s story
• How Indigenous Peoples respond rather than submit to imposed narratives

Learn more at dominationchronicles.com where you can view show notes and download a transcript. Don't forget to like and subscribe to our podcast on youtube.

Episode 6 marks a turning point in the long debate over federal domination of Native Nations. Steven T. Newcomb and Peter d'Errico walk through a recent Supreme Court dissent from Justices Thomas and Gorsuch that challenges the very foundation of plenary power---the claim that Congress holds total authority over Native Peoples. This power has shaped U.S. Indian law since the nineteenth century and rests on old racial assumptions and the so-called Doctrine of Discovery.

The conversation moves from the details of the domestic-violence case that triggered the dissent to the larger architecture of domination. The Court refused to hear the case, but the dissent calls for what it names "a day of reckoning." It questions the legal logic behind Kagama, the Major Crimes Act, and the trust doctrine itself. The episode shows how narrow legal disputes open up deeper questions about sovereignty, free existence, and the long reach of Christian imperial ideas embedded in U.S. law.

Newcomb and d'Errico also note the silence of the federal Indian law establishment. While legal communities in places like Guam reacted quickly, major Native-focused law organizations have not. The episode invites listeners to think past "settled law" and ask harder questions: What does freedom look like outside structures of domination? And what happens when even the Supreme Court begins to see the cracks?

Learn more at dominationchronicles.com where you can view show notes and download a transcript. Don't forget to like and subscribe to our podcast on youtube.

In 1975, Vine Deloria, Jr., wrote an article in Akwesasne Notes pondering “the future of Indians”. In 2025, fifty years later, a law review article proposed that “tribes” should have powers of “eminent domain” to “take” land for “public use”.

Steve and I discuss the strange and startling implications arising from originally free peoples turning toward the domination system that attacks their free existence.

Does it mean that the “boarding schools” were successful? That Henry Pratt succeeded in “killing the Indian and saving the man”?

Learn more at dominationchronicles.com where you can view show notes and download a transcript. Don't forget to like and subscribe to our podcast on youtube.

Learn more at dominationchronicles.com where you can view show notes and download a transcript. Don't forget to like and subscribe to our podcast on youtube.

The court ruled that Halverson could not sue the BIA because the US has “sovereign immunity”. It cited the 1823 Johnson v. McIntosh “Christian discovery” decision as the first item in its reasoning!. Learn more at dominationchronicles.com where you can view show notes and download a transcript. Don't forget to like and subscribe to our podcast on youtube.

The podcast offers clear discussion, steady analysis, and space for Indigenous voices. It invites listeners to understand how domination works and to imagine what liberation requires.