Robery A. Williams Jr.

The Algebra of Federal Indian Law and the Hard Trail of Decolonizing and Americanizing the
White Man’s Indian Jurisprudence

-Following WWII, the U.S. Government, in an effort for racial equality, decided to Americanize
the Native Americans by eliminating their sovereignty created by treaty pledged trust to the
Indian Nations, and completely integrating them into full tax paying citizens.
-The Native Americans understandably doubted the sincerity of the policy interpreting it as a last
step in a genocidal process of cultural liquidation; the final cleanup campaign in the US conquest
and colonization of the Indian Nations.
-Dillon S. Myer who was chosen to carry out government’s termination plan also served
previously as director of the War Relocation Authority for Japanese American detention camp
programs of WWII.
-When he posed the question to the Native Americans, What can we do to Americanize the
Indian? An Indian elder responded:
“You would forgive me if I tell you that my people were
Americans for 1000s of years before your people were. The
Question is not how you can Americanize us but how we can
American you… And the first thing we want to teach you is that, in the
American way of life, each man has respect for his brothers vision.
Because each of us respected his brothers dream, we
Enjoyed freedom here in American while you people were busy
killing and enslaving each other across the water.”
-The issue now becomes how can the white man’s legal vision of the Indian permit both peoples
to pursue their separate paths in peace without resort to power?
The ultimate goal of an Americanized scholarship is to enrich both the receiver and giver
of the gift to cement an alliance built not on power and enforced inequality, but on trust
and mutual respect.
Historically, Europe created a Doctrine of Discovery which reflected eurocentric beliefs which
refused to recognize legal status or rights for indigenous people.Occupied territories of the New
World was based on the Roman principle of ius gentium or the “Law of Nations”
Under the law of nations, the legal position of Indian tribes in their own territory was
settled upon the principal that Indians were heathens and infidel populations of the New
 World which required Europe’s hierarchical subjugation and remediation, defended by
the sword if necessary, which would bring the natives from darkness into light.
This legal concept this gave Europeans undeniable source of title and sovereignty to
territory inhabited by indigenous people which is articulated by Justice Marshall in the
1823 case Johnson v. McIntosh
Thus, in order as a first step towards the decolonization and Americanization of the white mans
law, this remnant of the white mans old vision, the Doctrine of Discovery, must be rejected and
replaced
The next issue becomes what is the alternative?
Williams looks to the principals in the Gus-Wen-Tah, the Two Row Wampum, which were
treaties and agreement between the great nations of Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
The principals symbolized two boats traveling down the same river together side by side
and neither drivers of the boat trying to steer the other’s vessel.
Thus, the alternative is recognized as:
(1) the Doctrine of Discovery being surrendered, meaning that the white man must give up
his unilateral power over the Indians vessel, and offer meaningful reparations sufficient
to enable the Indian to resume his own path.
(2) The principal of exclusive domestic jurisdiction where justice is dispensed by Indian
Courts instead of the conquerors courts.
Williams closes the essay by stating that todays current legal doctrines which continue to assert
the Eurocentric vision of justice explains why indigenous groups now seek to radically redefine
contemporary conceptions of their rights and status in domestic and international legal forums.