On Bill Maher and Indigenous Lands

Another View-from-the-Shore Commentary

Original Nations and Peoples and Their Territories in the Vast Geographical Area Now Called “California.”

During a monologue a couple of years ago, comedian Bill Maher took both the blue team and the red team of America to task by stating what he called “a new rule”: “You don’t really love America if you hate half the people in it, and also if you hate a lot of the things that everyone always loved about it.”

Behind his “new rule” is the expectation that people living in the United States ought to “love America,” and support “what everyone always loved about it.” Funny, though, that he was not very specific about what things he believes everyone always loved about the United States.

He did focus on the right to vote: “If you say you love America, don’t you also have to love the idea of everyone getting to vote?” “Don’t you have to love the peaceful transfer of power?”

Maher continued by saying of both sides of the American political spectrum: “For all the talk about fighting for the soul of America, no one seems to like it very much.”

He added the cynical view of those on the Left who believe that the United States is a “country that started out bad and will always be bad.” A country which was “founded on an unrelenting history of sucking, and unable to change.”

“But we have changed,” said Maher. “A lot.” He cited the example of Democrat Cory Bush tweeting out, “This land is stolen land, and Black people still aren’t free.” “And this was on the fourth of July. Really.”

Maher continued: “Not that I give a shit about the fourth of July, I’ve never been a rah, rah, guy. But I am a perspective guy, and that’s what too much of the left has lost, perspective. 72 percent of Black people under thirty are optimistic about their future in America, way more than white people the same age.”

He then offered his view-from-the-ship perspective regarding Indigenous lands: “And as far as the land goes, yes, I guess we could change the name of Captain America to Captain Stolen Land,” said Bill Maher to great laughter and applause, “but honestly, to all the people who start every public event now with one of those land acknowledgments, where they say, ‘I’m standing on land that was stolen from proud Indigenous people of the Chumash tribe,’ I say, ‘either give it back or shut the fu*k up.”

Comedians are amazingly insightful and bright. We tend to especially laugh when a comedian, in an irreverent manner, makes us see something that should have been obvious but was hidden from view. Comedy can be used to reveal hidden truths that seem obvious once they’re stated. In response, members of the audience are likely to laughingly think, “God, that’s so true, why have I never noticed that?”

But comedy can also be used to obfuscate and hide truth by using ridicule to shut down uncomfortable questions and voices society doesn’t want to hear. The position “either give it back or be silent about Indigenous lands” seems well-designed to shut down rather than open discussion about the relationship of domination that the U.S. society has with Indigenous nations and peoples and their lands.

Comedians exploit our prejudices, our stereotypes, and our sedimented assumptions. Take the phrase, “stolen land” as a case in point. That phrase seems so obviously true. But what if the word “stolen” is inaccurate? What if Maher’s framing is a skilled effort to silence and shut down those of us who would delve into the very foundation of an imperial American system, what the U.S. Supreme Court has called “the American empire,” that has used two billion acres of Native lands to develop into the country that Maher expects “everyone” to love?

Allow me to explain how this applies to “the golden state”: The geographical area now called “California” consists of roughly one hundred million acres of land. Eighteen so-called treaties with the Native nations of California were written up between 1851-52, but never ratified by the U.S. Senate. Ratification failed because of pressure exerted on the U.S. Senate by California’s congressional representatives. Because they were not ratified pursuant to the terms of the U.S. Constitution, the so-called 18 “treaties” never went into effect, and what was written in them became null and void.

Accordingly, not one square inch of Native land within the area of those so-called “treaties” was ever ceded, relinquished, or surrendered by those unratified documents. This means that to this day most of the lands “in” California are still Indian land. Let’s get the comedy writers on this right away, shall we? Let’s figure out the bit and the punch line! Maybe the joke is on those who fell for a false version of history and assumed that the Native lands in California were “stolen fair and square.”

Perhaps there is a source of humor in the ridiculous superstition that colonizing “boat people,” who sailed across an entire ocean, can simply walk ashore where entire nations and peoples have been living for countless generations, say some “mumbo jumbo” and engage in other ritualized symbology, and then claim on that basis to “take possession” of the lands and waters extending all the way from the mouth of the river where they made landfall to the source of the river. “That’s your claim? Seriously?”

But that is their bizarre claim. Take as an illustration the1938 book Creation of Rights of Sovereignty [Domination] Through Symbolic Acts, by Keller, Lissitzyn, and Mann. They were three PhD students of international law at Columbia University. They studied under Charles Cheney Hyde who taught international law and diplomacy at Columbia from 1925-1945. He served as solicitor of the US Department of State from 1923-25.

The claim of a right of empire and domain is actually the basis of the political and economic system of the American empire on this Turtle Island continent. And it’s based on metaphorical and symbolic acts that many people claim that Native lands are accurately called “stolen” by the “democracy” called the United States.

Maher’s ill-informed laugh line, for example, about lands “stolen” from “proud Indigenous people of the Chumash tribe” elicited laughter from his audience. But a more accurate way of thinking and speaking about this, from a Native perspective, is to point out that the Spanish, Mexican, and American political systems asserted a right of domination on top of the Chumash Nation and their lands, and on top of all the Native nations of California and the continent.

The word “stolen” was then used as a way to label a perpetual claim of a right of domination used against Native nations and peoples. “Stolen” is the word applied to those areas where a claimed right of domination over and to Native lands is now ongoing.

If we were to ask a team of comedy writers to produce some great jokes with witty punch lines about the assertion of a claim of a right of domination on top of all the original nations of this continent, and about the genocide committed against the Native peoples of California, could they rise to the occasion? Would such a focus lend itself to humor?

Clearly, the dominating society is not likely to relinquish or renounce or explicitly acknowledge the claim of a right of domination that it uses daily against the Native peoples of California and elsewhere. It’s that claim that has been used to economically benefit the American people by serving as the political and economic foundation of the United States.

Saying that the land was “stolen” serves an important hidden purpose: it directs focus away from the claim of a right of domination that has been used against the Native peoples of California since representatives of the Spanish crown of domination first arrived in 1542 and 1769.

We as Native people have an opportunity to advance a powerful point: The majority of the land in California still rightfully belongs to the Native nations of California. Why? Because the eighteen treaties of 1851-52 were never ratified, and the Native nations and peoples of California have never ceded, relinquished, or surrendered the millions of acres of land in California that still rightfully belong to the Native peoples. And that’s no joke.