Indigenous Peoples Day Acknowledgement with guest speaker Steven Newcomb

Steven Newcomb

Steven Newcomb (Shawnee) is co-founder and director of the Indigenous Law Institute, which he founded with traditional Oglala Lakota headman Birgil Kills Straight (1940-2019). Newcomb is also the director of Original Nations Advocates, and he has been studying and writing about U.S. federal Indian law and policy and the Doctrine of Discovery and Domination for some four decades. His work focuses on the contrast between the free existence of our Native nations and peoples, extending back to the beginning of time, and the system of domination that was brought by ship across the Atlantic Ocean and imposed on everyone and everything. There is an additional contrast between the ecological and spiritual wisdom of original nations and peoples, and the patterns of domination and dehumanization used for centuries against Indigenous nations and peoples on the basis of the Vatican papal documents and royal charters. Newcomb published many of his findings in his book Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (2008), and he is co-producer of a documentary movie The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code, directed by Sheldon Wolfchild (Dakota), a movie which is based on the book Pagans.