Domination Chronicles opens the new year with a wide-ranging conversation that sets the direction for months ahead. We explore free existence and domination through close attention to words, meanings, and entangled histories. Drawing on legal documents, technology debates, and long-standing narratives of sympathy and apology, the podcast invites careful reading and sustained reflection. Future episodes will include guest voices and focused discussions of cases, texts, and emerging tools—always with the aim of understanding life beyond inherited frames.

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In this episode of Domination Chronicles, our hosts Steven T. Newcomb and Peter d'Errico commemorate seventy years of Tee-Hit-Ton v. United States. Our hosts reflect on seventy years of Tee-hit-ton to expose how U.S. law has been used to legitimize domination—both domestically and globally. They trace how the 1955 decision reaffirmed the 1823 ruling in Johnson v. McIntosh, which asserted a U.S. “right of domination” over Indigenous lands through the doctrine of Christian discovery. By quietly deleting the word “Christian,” the Court in Tee-Hit-Ton sanitized this religious foundation for a modern legal audience, making it easier for later courts—including a 2005 opinion by Ruth Bader Ginsburg—to rely on Johnson without confronting its theological roots.

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.

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Our springboard is the 2020 Supreme Court decision, McGirt v. Oklahoma, that upheld US criminal law jurisdiction over “major crimes” in “Indian country” (via the 1885 Major Crimes Act, an act based on the claim of a right of domination by the US over the Original Nations).

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).

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The Domination Chronicles explores how everyday language hides systems of power. In this episode, Steven T. Newcomb and Peter d’Errico unpack the words we use—state, sovereignty, civilization, landlord—and show how they mask a “claim of a right of domination” embedded in U.S. law and Western thought. Drawing on decades of research, they trace how naming, translation, and legal rhetoric normalize domination while obscuring original free existence. Their dialogue invites listeners to pause, look again at familiar terms, and consider what it means to step outside the worldview that produced them.

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In this episode, Steven T. Newcomb and Peter d’Errico explore how quantum physics offers a fresh way to understand the idea of free existence. Drawing on the insights of physicist Federico Faggin and philosopher Hans Busstra, they examine how concepts like indeterminacy and entanglement challenge the rigid, mechanical worldview that shaped the domination system brought from Christendom to Turtle Island.

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.

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A dramatic Dissent by Supreme Court Justices Gorsuch and Thomas Opens a Path to Tectonic Changes in US Law. 

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.

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The confluence of a 1975 article by Vine Deloria, Jr., and a 2025 law review article sparks a conversation about what's roiling our minds at the moment.

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.

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In this episode, Steve Newcomb and Peter d'Errico dissect a recent concurring opinion from the Washington State Supreme Court that denounces the racist language in foundational federal Indian law cases while leaving the core doctrines of domination untouched. Using the FLYING T RANCH v. STILLAGUAMISH TRIBE decision as their entry point, they expose a crucial distinction: cleaning up offensive rhetoric does nothing to dismantle the legal architecture that continues to deny Indigenous sovereignty and legitimize settler control over Native lands. Steve and Peter demonstrate how well-meaning critiques of racist language can actually obscure the persistence of domination by allowing courts to appear enlightened while perpetuating the same colonial doctrines—now dressed in sanitized prose. The conversation challenges listeners to see through the emperor's new clothes: redacting slurs doesn't erase the extravagant pretension that Euro-American law has legitimate authority over peoples who never surrendered their freedom and independence. 

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.

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In this episode, Steve Newcomb and Peter d'Errico unpack the hidden language of symbols—statues, seals, emblems, and monuments—revealing how these artifacts don't just reflect history but actively construct and maintain systems of domination. They examine how symbols emerge from shared mental and behavioral frameworks, become gateways into understanding entire worldviews, and serve as evidence of past assumptions that continue to shape present realities. The conversation explores why controversies over removing or preserving "unacceptable" symbols matter so deeply: because destroying these markers erases critical evidence of the ideological foundations that still govern Indigenous-colonial relations today. Throughout, Steve and Peter trace these patterns back to Original Peoples' free and independent existence, asking what symbols reveal about the pretensions of empire and the enduring power of curiosity as a tool for seeing through domination's constructed 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.

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Steve Newcomb and Peter d’Errico dig into Halverson v. Burgum, the August 21, 2025, Ninth Circuit dismissal of Jack Halverson’s (Crow Nation) case against the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

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.

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In this inaugural episode of *Domination Chronicles*, Steven Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape) and Peter d'Errico deepen a decades-long dialogue on how systems of domination have shaped U.S. federal Indian law, beginning with the 1823 Johnson v. *McIntosh* decision and its roots in 15th-century the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. Visit dominationchronicles.com for show notes and transcripts...

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The Domination Chronicles is a new podcast that studies how systems of domination took shape and how they still shape our world. Hosted by Steven T. Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape) and Peter d’Errico, the series draws on decades of research in federal Indian law, history, and Indigenous resistance. Each episode looks at the roots of the “right of domination,” from papal bulls and imperial law to modern legal doctrines that still affect Native nations today.

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.

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