The Corporation and the Tribe

A prologue

The system ain't broke. It was built to be this way.

Tom B. K. Goldtooth (Dine/Dakota)

This article examines how the foundational legal definitions of the “corporation” and the “tribe” between 1790 and 1887 worked together to establish and protect imperialist social relations and conditions in the United States between powerful financial interests, both government and corporate, and Indigenous peoples. While the analysis is focused historically, I want to frame it by the current political debates and organizing efforts against government and corporate collusion and fraud represented by Occupy Wall Street (ows) and my engagement with Occupy Oakland. I hope this will help to better understand how the history of the territorial dispossession and collusive fraud enacted by the US government and corporate interests against Indigenous peoples clarifies the kinds of issues of government and corporate collusion and fraud that ows has addressed. To be clear, the 1 percent did not show up in 2008. They have been around all along, targeting Indigenous peoples and their territories over which the US empire was built and continues to operate.

On September 17, 2011, ows began in Zuccotti Park (Liberty Plaza) in Manhattan's financial district with the goal of “fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations.”¹ From my particular viewpoint in Oakland, California, it seemed that ows had swiftly coalesced the demands of a wide array of grassroots-based organizations and individuals for solidarity against and open debate about the more insidious legal protections of government and corporate collusion. For instance, discussions facilitated by ows exposed the gross misrepresentations of congressional representatives and energy industry ceos about job creation and public safety in Canada's Keystone xl Pipeline and its proposed extensions through the United States and then linked these lies to the ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples for environmental justice.² When so many Occupy Oakland participants began showing up in solidarity at Indigenous actions in the Bay Area, such as the Chochenyo Ohlone's Annual Emeryville Shellmound Protest on Black Friday, I genuinely believed that the ows movement had succeeded in opening a critical space for much-needed discussions about the structural, ideological, and social links between the foreclosure of many blacks, Asian Americans, and Latina/os from their homes and the US dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their territorial homelands. I was optimistic—unusually so for me—that these discussions would facilitate meaningful solidarity and transformation.

Many things happened that changed my mind and thinking so much that I began the research that informs this article. The first occurred on October 27, 2011, when a group of us failed to convince those present at an Occupy Oakland General Assembly to change the name of Occupy Oakland to Decolonize Oakland in recognition of the fact that Oakland is already on occupied lands. While the assembly did pass a rather non-threatening statement of solidarity with Indigenous peoples, they accused us then and in the Bay Area press of trying to “guilt trip” them into some larger-than-life demand for Indigenous land reparations that went far beyond, they argued, the urgent issues of the foreclosure crisis and the militarized crackdown on ows in Oakland that they cared about. They argued with us more sincerely, and ironically, that changing the name from Occupy to Decolonize would result in them losing “brand recognition” and so affiliation with the broader movement.³

We responded by organizing a series of teach-ins to more carefully work people through the historical, legal, and social connections between the foreclosures on black, Asian American, and Latina/o homes and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples in the Bay Area. Along with several other mostly Indigenous women, we hosted the teach-ins just before the General Assembly from mid-December 2011 through early May 2012 at Oscar Grant Plaza and then at community centers within walking distance of the plaza. Initially the teach-ins gathered a diverse range of individuals. But...