Domination Chronicles: Symbols, Enigmas, Curiosity

Symbols are not passive decorations. In this episode, Steven Newcomb and Peter d’Errico examine how statues, seals, emblems, monuments, and public images help create a shared reality. They ask what these objects reveal about domination, especially when communities debate whether to remove, preserve, or reinterpret them.

The conversation treats symbols as evidence of the mental worlds that produced them. A monument may appear to be a marker of the past, but it can also continue to authorize present structures of power. Newcomb and d’Errico invite listeners to approach symbols with curiosity rather than habit, asking what assumptions they carry about land, people, history, and authority. This approach is central to the Doctrine of Discovery Project’s work: the systems of domination are not only written in statutes and court opinions. They are also built into the visual and ceremonial language through which societies tell themselves what is normal.

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