E010: Pulp Legal Fiction: The Bizarre Case Of Tee-hit-ton v. US

In this episode of Domination Chronicles, our hosts Steven T. Newcomb and Peter d'Errico commemorate seventy years of Tee-Hit-Ton v. United States. Our hosts reflect on seventy years of Tee-hit-ton to expose how U.S. law has been used to legitimize domination—both domestically and globally. They trace how the 1955 decision reaffirmed the 1823 ruling in Johnson v. McIntosh, which asserted a U.S. “right of domination” over Indigenous lands through the doctrine of Christian discovery. By quietly deleting the word “Christian,” the Court in Tee-Hit-Ton sanitized this religious foundation for a modern legal audience, making it easier for later courts—including a 2005 opinion by Ruth Bader Ginsburg—to rely on Johnson without confronting its theological roots.

Newcomb and d'Errico then place Tee-Hit-Ton alongside Brown v. Board of Education (1954). At first glance, Brown, which repudiated “separate but equal,” appears to move against racial domination. But we explore how both cases, in different ways, served U.S. Cold War ambitions and a broader project of global control—over people, land, and resources such as the timber taken from Tlingit territory.

Drawing on cases, commentary, and human rights documents, this episode reveals how legal “progress” and legal repression can advance the same imperial trajectory.

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