A Look Back at Walter Echo-Hawk’s, In the Light of Justice (2013)
Indigenous Law Institute shares Steven T. Newcomb’s look back at Walter Echo-Hawk’s In the Light of Justice, and his argument that “reconciliation” leaves the U.S. system of domination over Native nations unchallenged.
Published on: | Published by: Steven T. Newcomb | Tags: steven-newcomb domination federal-indian-law johnson-v-mcintosh plenary-power doctrine-of-discovery
The Indigenous Law Institute shares a new essay by ILI co-founder and director Steven T. Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape) from The Domination Chronicles. Newcomb revisits Walter Echo-Hawk’s In the Light of Justice (2013) and its foreword by James Anaya, asking whether the book helps readers see U.S. federal Indian law and policy for what it is: a present-day system of domination. Anaya speaks of “patterns of domination set in motion by colonization,” but the book turns to atonement, reparations, and “reconciliation” rather than challenging that system. Newcomb notes that the index contains no entry for “domination,” that the word “ascendency” in Johnson v. M’Intosh goes unexamined, and that a “balance” between dominionism and Indigenous worldviews never existed to be restored. For ILI readers, the essay sharpens a core concern of the Institute: naming the U.S. claim of a right of domination, including the plenary power doctrine, and challenging it.