San Diego News

Steven Newcomb (Shawnee and Lenape) gave a powerful talk as part of January's community dinner at the Normal Height Community Center sponsored by the San Diego Indian Human Services.

A national and international speaker, Mr. Newcomb, who lives in Alpine, CA, is also a columnist with the Indian Country Today Media Network in New York City, and author of the best seller “Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery” (2008).  Mr. Newcomb told the story about how he found his life’s path, an unorthodox journey that began when he was a teenager and traveled on his ten-speed bicycle from the San Fernando Valley into the Santa Monica Mountains to find a Chumash medicine man named Semu Huaute and a place called “Red Wind.” From that point, Newcomb hitchhiked many times across the country and wandered for several years.

Eventually he enrolled at the University of Oregon where he majored in Rhetoric and Communication, and then embarked on a decade of his own independent research. His story especially riveted the young people in the room.  The fact that he also worked as an advisor to Tanya Gonnella Frichner when she was the North American regional representative to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, went past their heads but was recognized by everyone else. 

In 1992, Newcomb co-founded the Indigenous Law Institute (ILI) with Birgil Kills Straight, an Oglala Lakota ceremonial leader from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Kills Straight was one of the main organizers of the Chief Bigfoot Memorial Ride (from 1986 to 1990), in honor of the Lakota ancestors killed by the Seventh Calvary at Wounded Knee in 1890. They founded the ILI as part of a global campaign to challenge a doctrine still active in U.S. law which holds that the first “Christian people” to have “discovered” non-Christian American lands had the right assume ultimate title and ultimate dominion or right of dominance, over those lands. 

Newcomb’s interest in words and their meanings leads him to explain how words shape and create reality.  The Christian European invasion brought words of domination; they used such words as “tribe” to downgrade the status of Indian nations.  He spoke of something he views as a crime by the United States government: The forcing of Indian children into government- and Church-run boarding schools where the children were punished and abused for speaking their own languages. As a result many Indian languages are now dying out. Perhaps the most startling revelation from Newcomb’s research is that Indian lands in California were never ceded to the US government because the U.S. Senate never ratified the treaties made with the Indians of California in 1852.

Asked what kind of future he would like to see, Newcomb said he would like to see a future in which the ancient wisdom of Indigenous nations and peoples would lead to a future of revitalization and healing for all peoples, for all the ecosystems of the planet, and all living things. 

Abandoned Indian law scholar, Steven Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape) gave a powerful talk as part of the community dinner at the Normal Heights Community Center in January. 

Author of the best seller, Pagans in the Promised Land, Steve shared his unorthodox journey away from high school, to the streets, to academia, back to the streets, to his search for medicine men to teach him the wisdom he couldn’t find in college, and finally to the founding of the Indigenous Law Institute.  His story especially riveted the young people in the room.  The fact that he worked as an advisor to Tanya Gonnella Frichner when she was the North American regional representative  to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues went past their heads but was recognized by everyone else.           

His interest in words and their meanings leads him to explain how words create reality.  The Spanish invasion brought words of domination; they used such words as “tribe.”  That word was invented by the Romans to denigrate the three indigenous peoples of Italy.  He thinks that the abuse and dysfunction that characterize so many indigenous people comes partially from the fact that mother tongues were silenced.  In their place were substituted worship of things that are inconsequential to life, such as worship of capital; capital became so powerful that some people will destroy everything to get something that is essentially digits in a computer.             

The most shocking revelation from his research is that Indian lands in southern California were never ceded to the US government because Congress did not sign the 1852 Treaty of Santa Ysabel.  Asked if he succeeds in radicalizing us in southern California, what would the outcome look like?  Steve answered we would be free to follow such teachings as those of Martin Luther King who said there is one basic law, the Law of Absolute Morality.  A land where people practice this and other words of ancient wisdom would lead to a revitalized and healing future.