Domination Chronicles: Seeing Through To The Emperor’s Extravagant Pretension

In this episode, Newcomb and d’Errico examine a Washington Supreme Court concurrence in Flying T Ranch v. Stillaguamish Tribe. The opinion criticizes racist language in foundational federal Indian law cases, but the hosts ask whether removing offensive words is enough when the underlying legal architecture remains intact.

The episode presses an important distinction. Courts may condemn old rhetoric while continuing to rely on the doctrines that made that rhetoric legally powerful. This allows legal institutions to appear enlightened without surrendering the claimed authority of discovery, conquest, and domination. Newcomb and d’Errico call listeners to see through the cleaned-up language to the deeper “extravagant pretension” that Euro-American law has legitimate authority over Native nations. The conversation is useful for anyone tracking how institutions manage criticism: they may apologize for words while preserving the structure those words once openly named.

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