Why I'm an Anti-Dominationist

What Happens When "True Believers" Assume that Forcibly Imposed Domination is God's Will?

From PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by John Clark Ridpath, TO WHICH IS ADDED THE STORY OF COLUMBUS AND THE NEW WORLD by JAMES W. BUEL (PHILADELPHIA: HISTORIAL PUBLISHING COMPANY), (1894)

As the descendants of the original nations and peoples of this Turtle Island continent, we can reflect upon the free and independent way of life of our Native ancestors.

They were stripped of their free existence by the peoples of Western Christendom, who believed it was the will of their “God” and thus their “divine [i.e. “God-given”] right to overrun the lands of our nations and peoples and force us as Native peoples to live under the sway [domination] of the “Christian empire” (“christiani imperii” in the Latin language of the Roman Empire’s “catholic” [universal] church).

After many centuries, this way of thinking developed into the claim of a right of domination over our Native nations by the American empire as one of the political successors of the Christian empire.

In my book Pagans in the Promised Land (Fulcrum, 2008), I say that “the dominating moral system that underlies [U.S.] federal Indian law and policy is the same moral system that underlies U.S. foreign policy.” U.S. foreign policy is premised on what I call the Conqueror [Dominator] model and the Chosen People-Promised Land model. Those two images rest “on the presumption that the United States has a divine right of empire, not simply in North America, but throughout the world.”

The Chosen People-Promised Land model used against our Native nations and peoples on this Turtle Island continent underlies the idea of “Zion” in the Old Testament, and those who now follow the political ideology called “Zionism.”

This past November 2024, Pete Hegseth, who is now the U.S. Secretary of Defense in the Trump Administration, stated: “Zionism and Americanism are intertwined as the front lines of Western civilization [domination] and freedom in our world today.”

The above association between “civilization” and “domination” follows from the following definition of civilization found the Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1996): “the process of civilizing,” “the forcing of a cultural pattern on a population to which it is foreign.” (emphasis added)

Ezra Stiles, who was the president of Yale University, capably expressed this attitude in a sermon in May of 1783. In that sermon, Stiles predicted that in the future “the Lord shall have made his American Israel, high above all nations,” meaning “superior in rank and power.” The phrase “above all nations” uses an invisible structure found in the English language that is accurately expressed as up/down, over/under, above/below.”

The word “above” suggests or implies the verb “to ascend,” meaning “to move upward,” and “to proceed from a lower to a higher position.” The mental imagery of “the Lord” of the Bible making an American Israel “high above” all other nations suggests that that culminating position will be the result of what, in the minds of true believers, “God” desires and thus “God” wills as an outcome from a particular starting point that begins at one level or height.

From that starting level a series of movements take place upwards by the so-called chosen nation or people, ultimately “ascending” to a position “above all others,” meaning to a position of ascendancy.

Ascendancy is the term used by Chief Justice John Marshall in the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling when he referred to “the character and religion” of this continent’s “heathen” Native inhabitants, which he declared, “afforded an apology [a rationale] for considering them as a people over whom the superior genius of Europe might claim an ascendancy.”

And what image does “ascendancy” evoke? According to Webster’s dictionary it evokes “a governing or controlling influence; domination.”

So, let’s take a moment to reflect upon the image of nations and peoples living free and independent of any foreign domination. Now imagine that those free nations and peoples have been violently and lethally forced to live under the domination of an invading nation or people.

Given the scenario of such an outcome, is it considered permissible, from a particular viewpoint, for the nations and peoples that have been forced to live under such a system to resist and oppose the domination imposed on them?

Suppose that the free and independent peoples that have been forced to live under and subject to domination are called “terrorists” and “anarchists” by their dominators when they try to oppose the system of domination forcibly imposed on them.

By way of analogy, imagine calling slaves who oppose their enslavement “terrorists.” Imagine a nation or people that has had a system of domination imposed on them being condemned for attempting to cast off the imposed system of domination so they can restore their original free existence.

We might ask ourselves, “On what basis could it be called wrongful for a free people who have been violently robbed of their free existence to attempt to restore their free way of life?”

Here’s one possible answer based on the Chosen People-Promised Land Model from the Old Testament of the Bible: “If the ones who have imposed a system of domination on the free nations and peoples have done so because they truly believe it was ‘God’s will’ for them to do so, then in the minds of those true believers, the ones forced to live under domination are opposing God’s will if they attempt to end the domination and restore their natural liberty and their free existence.”

It follows from this that we can think of the following wording as a cardinal rule of the true believers in the Chosen People-Promised Land Model: “No one may oppose a system of domination that ‘God’ has commanded into existence.” Why? “Because the true believers assume that the resulting system of domination is the outcome or result of God’s will.”

We might call this “The Hidden Logic of God’s Divine Domination,” which is apt when we consider the statement found in Pope Alexander VI’s papal decree of May 3, 1493: “We trust in Him [‘God’] from whom empires and dominations and all good things proceed.” (In the original Latin: “in Illo a quo imperia et dominations ac bona cuncta procedunt confidentes.”)

Evidently, this makes me an ardent anti-dominationist, or someone who opposes an imposed system of domination based on a claim of a right or divine right of domination. That claim of a right to dominate is premised on some biblical notion of the divine will of a “God” from whom empires and dominations and all the good things emerge.

The “good things” (e.g., the massive accumulation of wealth) being referred to are acquired by means of building, extending, and maintaining empire and domination. Ever see the gorgeous campus of the University of San Diego, a Catholic unversity in the Kumeyaay nation territory? Ever see the stunning campus of Pepperdine University, a Catholic university overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Malibu, California in the territory of the Chumash nation? That’s just two of the 1,358 Catholic university campuses around the globe.

Think of the overall amount of land, wealth, and power that has been acquired from the propagation of what Pope Alexander VI called the “Christian empire” (“imperii christiani propagationem”), and subjugating by reducing “barbarous nations” (“ac barbarae nationes deprimantur”). Today the Christian empire of the Catholic Church is said to own approximately 177 million acres of land around the world. By contrast, think of the extent to which Christian European domination has been asserted and maintained over the traditional lands of Indigenous or original nations and people, in the name of “the state” [of domination] and so-called “public lands.”

The subjugation of “barbarous nations” is the pattern of thought behind what the U.S. Supreme Court has published on its website as the Court’s “Primary Holding” in the case Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. McIntosh 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543 (1823), which I wrote about in a previous Substack post, “Let’s Talk About Knowledge.”

That Primary Holding reads: “When a tract of land has been acquired [obtained] by conquest [domination] and the property [domination] of a majority of the [dominating] people is derived from that conquest [domination], the [original Native] people who have been conquered [dominated] have a right to live on the land but cannot transfer title to the land.”

It is this patterning that exemplifies the two political ideologies named Americanism and Zionism. This is not anti-semitic but it most certainly is anti-domination. It is a patterning that results from the Chosen People-Promised Land model of domination that is kept disguised by positive sounding words such as “liberty” “freedom,” and “democracy.” What is called the “civil religion” of the United States traces back to what Thomas Hobbes revealed in his book De Cive (The Citizen).

Hobbes titled the second section of De Cive “Part II: Dominion,” and began the Chapter with the title: “Of the Causes and First Beginning of Civil Government.” “Dominion” is a euphemistic form of the term domination, as William Brandon summed up so succinctly in his book New Worlds for Old, “political power grown from property—dominium—was, in effect, domination.” The adage, “All Roads Lead to Rome” is accurately re-expressed as “All Roads Lead to Domination.”

Steven Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape) is the director of the Indigenous Law Institute and Original Nations Advocates. He is the author of Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, and co-producer of the documentary movie “The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code.” More of his writings can be found at original free nations.com.