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Tom Cruise and the Indian Subprime Crisis
It always was, and always is, about the land.
Every so often, articles in The Wall Street Journal (and sometimes even This Week From Indian Country Today) touting the advantages of private property for Indian people, not to mention Supreme Court decisions such as Carcieri and U.S. v. Navajo Nation, remind Indian country of what has, and always will, give Indian law its shape: property rights.
As the Supreme Court said in the 1955 Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. U.S. case—and these are not the words of some left-wing activist, but of the United States Supreme Court—“the dominant purpose of the whites in America was to occupy the land.” And, if we are going to talk about land, we have to talk about Thomas Jefferson.
Why Thomas Jefferson? Because Jefferson’s idea of America was that everyone would be a yeoman farmer with private property, and that would promote private virtue and patriotism.
He worried that, without private property as a social anchor, the republic would decay in time and become like Europe, with its aristocracies and feudalism. His philosophical solution to the problem of decay in time was to expand the republic in space, even to empire, so that society would not turn inward and feudally compound itself. It is easy to see the effects of that policy: Louisiana. Alaska. Manifest Destiny. Tee-Hit-Ton.
And if we are going to understand Thomas Jefferson, we have to talk about Tom Cruise.
Why Tom Cruise? He is our biggest movie star and thus our biggest teller of the myths America tells itself, myths which can be powerful and difficult to root out from society and from the law.
One of Cruise’s lesser works, the 1992 film Far and Away, opens with Cruise as a young man in Ireland, as English soldiers have come to take his family’s land. His father is dying of a heart attack during the foreclosure, and he grabs Cruise by the lapels and tells him, “Hold onto the land.” Cruise then goes to America.
To digress for a moment, Ireland was the practice run for the New World. Elizabethan England sharpened its legal knives about dispossession in rationalizing their conquest of Ireland, characterizing the Irish as tribal, pagan, matriarchal and without a fixed conception of individual property. As the “discovering” sovereign and with the good fortune of reading John Locke on property (“Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided…he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and [he] thereby makes it his property.”), the English had legal arguments to dispossess the Irish, and this idea was carried in ships to America.
Far and Away ends with Cruise at the starting line of a land rush, about to race forward and claim some land in Oklahoma, following the guideposts laid forth by Jefferson. Indian land had been opened as part of the Allotment process, and he is going to fulfill his father’s dying wish by taking Indian land, irony notwithstanding.
The dramatic image of Cruise at the starting line, ready to bring progress to the continent, is easy to imagine upon reading Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall’s 1823 opinion in Indian law’s foundational case, Johnson v. M’Intosh:
“Conquest gives a title which the Courts of the conqueror cannot deny, whatever the private and speculative opinions of individuals may be, respecting the original justice of the claim.”
History was Marshall’s vehicle for holding the “Indian inhabitants” as “merely as occupants,” without the ability to “transfer absolute title to others.” Marshall adopted the defendant’s arguments that the Indians no more owned the land than the fisherman owns the sea, that natural law required holding against their rights, as their lands “were not used by them in such a manner as to prevent their being appropriated by a people of cultivators.” He concluded, “to leave them in possession of their country was to leave the country a wilderness.”
Johnson is a great read, as history, as literature, as the best and worst of the lawyer’s art. In the end, though, Johnson simply embraces what we are taught is the genius of the common law, the implicit capitalist impulse of the highest and best use. While Marshall, as a federalist, was often opposed to his distant cousin Jefferson, when it came to land, however, they were in agreement.
Felix Cohen, the godfather of Indian law, pointed out in a 1947 law review article the factual inaccuracies of conventional American history:
“Every American schoolboy is taught to believe that the lands of the United States were acquired by purchase or treaty from Britain, Spain, France, Mexico and Russia…the historic fact is that practically all of the real estate acquired by the United States since 1776 was purchased…from its original Indian owners.”
However, it was in pointed rebuttal to Cohen that the Supreme Court in Tee-Hit-Ton refused to let the myth perish, and countered Cohen’s facts with its own version of the myth:
“Every American schoolboy knows that the savage tribes of this continent were deprived of their ancestral ranges by force and that, even when the Indians ceded millions of acres by treaty in return for blankets, food and trinkets, it was not a sale but the conquerors’ will that deprived them of their land.”
Tee-Hit-Ton is a 1955 Supreme Court case turning on whether the lands of the Tlingit Tee-Hit-Tons were sufficient to constitute “property” under the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. The case’s outcome is clear right off the bat when the court calls Johnson a “great case” and states the question presented as whether “between 60 and 70 individuals” can lay claim to “over 350,000 acres of land.”
Tee-Hit-Ton holds that “It is to be presumed that in this matter the United States would be governed by such considerations of justice as would control a Christian people in their treatment of an ignorant and dependent race.” The Court sets the intention of the Indians aside, as in Johnson, and held that it “[finds] nothing to indicate any intention by Congress (the sovereign) to grant to the Indians any permanent rights in the lands of Alaska.” Property is what the sovereign will recognize.
In a footnote, the Court distinguishes the 1907 Cariño case, which arose during the United States’ occupation of the Philippines. There, Cariño made a successful claim to property, “in which tribal custom and tribal recognition of ownership played a part.” Cariño’s claim, though, was to a “370-acre farm which his grandfather had fenced some 50 years before.” So there it is. Someone had translated John Locke into Spanish, or Tagalog, and instructed Cariño’s grandfather on the importance of fences.
Johnson and Tee-Hit-Ton thus set up the poles of what is Indian property and what isn’t.
The General Allotment Act of 1887 was the tool for the transformation of Indian lands from one to the other, from a protected right to use that isn’t property to an unprotected fee simple that is. It was supposed to take 25 years, one generation, to make the transition—dad and mom won’t get it, but their kids will—just like every other immigrant family whose parents speak a native language at home while the kids speak perfect English. However, we know the results: 90 million acres lost between 1887 and Allotment’s end in 1934. As President Theodore Roosevelt put it, in a metaphor redolent of canal-building and “big sticks,” Allotment was a “mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass.”
The famous Meriam Report in 1928 and the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, the so-called “Indian New Deal,” attempted to pick up the pieces left after Allotment. As the Meriam Report put it:
“It almost seems as if the government assumed that some magic in individual ownership of property would in itself prove an educational civilizing factor, but unfortunately this policy has for the most part operated in the opposite direction.”
The Meriam Report thus holds that disastrous results may extend from overemphasis—or at least a misplaced trust—on individualized property ownership. In other words, the General Allotment Act and its aftermath were really just the subprime crisis of the 19th century. The past is always prologue, and we are condemned to repeat it.
As the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) put it even before the Great Recession:
“Just as more Americans owned their homes than ever before, ‘predatory lenders’ targeted those which were ‘house rich but cash poor.’ This ‘[dislodges] long-standing residents and [provides] an opportunity for resale at a high profit.’”
In the end, we have The Wall Street Journal and a purist view of property on one hand and, on the other, the Meriam and HUD reports and those fighting the subprime crisis by saying that we cannot rely on markets alone to justly run a society, that the premise of free market economics, of perfect information and equal access to it, is almost never an actual fact.
To conclude with Tom Cruise, attempting to ensure a free market while the government is obligated to protect those to whom it owes both treaty obligations and self assumed trust duties is a path that has ultimately proved a Mission Impossible. When forced to choose, the latter is the better path. Leaving Indian property rights—like subprime borrowers—to the whims of the market is indeed Risky Business. Indian nations should do as Cruise’s fictional father advised and “hold onto the land.”
Steven Paul McSloy is a partner in the Indian Law and Tribal Representation practice at SNR Denton in New York City. He was previously the General Counsel of the Oneida Indian Nation and has taught American Indian Law at five law schools. Kyle Leingang assisted in the preparation of this article, which is based on a speech given at Harvard Law School.
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/ict_sbc/tom-cruise-and-the-indian-subprime-crisis/
Originally By Steven Paul McSloy March 11, 2011
Don’t pay attention to that man behind the curtain
Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore
The Wizard of Oz: as extracted from ‘Cracking the Code’
Don’t pay attention to that man behind the curtain — just follow that yellow brick road and do as you are told!
WHOLESALE — To sell by wholesale is to sell by large parcels, generally in original packages, and not by retail. Black’s Law Dictionary, 1st Edition. Compare retail.
Note: The US government acquired title to our birth certificates in wholesale, or bulk purchase. Re the double-entry bookkeeping system of the Department of the Treasury, wholesale is the debit, or Public side, and retail is the credit, or private side.
WIZARD OF OZ, THE. Motion Picture, 1939, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, book by L. Frank Baum; adaptation for the screen by Noël Langley; screenplay by Noël Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf; Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg; Produced by Mervyn LeRoy; Directed by Victor Fleming.
Note: Just as you can read between the gory lines in the newspaper on any day and discover clues issued by the Powers That Be — if you look hard enough — as to what is actually going on, such notice can also be found in lighter faire, like the movies. Such a movie was The Wizard of Oz, an allegory for the new state of affairs in America in the 1930’s following the stock market crash and factual bankruptcy of the US Government immediately there-after.
The setting was Kansas — Heartland America, and geographical center of the USA. In comes the twister, the tornado, i.e. whirling, confusion — the stock market crash, theft of America’s: gold, US bankruptcy, the Great Depression — and whisks Dorothy and Toto up into a new, artificial dimension somewhere above the solid ground of Kansas. When they finally land in Oz, Dorothy comments to her little companion:
“Toto, — I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
That’s right. After the bankruptcy, Kansas was no longer just “plain old Kansas”- it was now “KS,” an artificial corporate venue of the bankrupt United States, newly established “federal territory,” part of the “Federal Zone,” and Dorothy and Toto were “in this state” (see “in this state”).
In the 1930s, the all-capital letters-written (see all-capital letters-written) STRAWMAN (see strawman), newly created artificial aspect of the former American sovereigns, had no brain-and Americans were too confused and distracted by all the commotion to figure out that they even had a strawman. The Scarecrow identified his strawman persona for Dorothy:
“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking. Of course, I’m not bright, about doing things.”
And in his classic song, “If I Only had a Brain,” the Scarecrow/Strawman succinctly augured:
“I’d unravel every riddle, For every ‘individdle’, (see individual) In trouble, or in pain.“
Translation: Once one discovers that his straw man exists, all political and legal mysteries, complexities, and confusions are resolved-and once one takes title to his straw man, he can protect himself from any legal trouble or legal damage.
The Tin Man, or “T-I-N” (Taxpayer Identification Number-Man), was a hollow man of metal, a “vessel,” or “vehicle” (see vessel, vehicle), newly created commercial code words for the straw man. Just like the Straw Man had no brain, this Tin Man vessel had no heart. Both were “artificial persons” (see person). One of the definitions of “tin” in Webster’s is “counterfeit.” The Tin Man also represented the mechanical and heartless aspect of commerce and commercial law. Just like they say in the Mafia: “Nothing personal — it’s just business.” The heartless Tin Man also carried an ax, traditional symbol for God — i.e. modern commercial law — in most earlier dominant civilizations, including fascist states. In the words of the Tin Man, expressing relief after Dorothy had oiled his arm:
“I’ve held that ax up for ages”.
The word “Ace” is etymologically related to the word “ax,” and in a deck of cards the only one above the King is the Ace, i.e. God. One of the “Axis” powers of World War II, Italy, was a fascist state. The symbol for fascism is the “fasces,” a bundle of rods with an ax bound up in the middle and its blade projecting. The fasces may be found on the reverse of the American Mercury-headed Dime (the Roman deity Mercury was the God of Commerce), and on the wall behind, and on each side of, the Speaker’s podium in the US Senate (each gold fasces is approximately six feet in height). At the base of the Seal of the US Senate are two crossed fasces.
The Lion, “king of beasts,” or “king of animals’ (some members of society regard you as nothing more than an animal, principally “cattle”) – a denigration in itself – representing the once-fearless American people, had lost his courage. After your first round with the UCC-constituted IRS “defending” your T-I-N man dummy corporation vessel/vehicle, individual employee, public corporation all-capital letters-written name, artificial person straw man, you probably lost some of your courage too. You don’t know it, but the IRS has been dealing with you strictly under the laws of commerce. Just like the Tin Man, commerce is heartless.
To find the Wizard you had to “follow the yellow brick road,” i.e. follow the trail of America’s stolen gold and you will find the thief who stole it. In the beginning of the movie the Wizard was represented by the traveling mystic, “Professor Marvel,” whom Dorothy encountered when she ran away with Toto. His macabre shingle touted that he was “Acclaimed by the Crowned Heads of Europe, Past, Present and Future.” Boy, that Professor Marvel must have been a regular wizard to be acclaimed by the future crowned heads of Europe – before they were even crowned! Before the bankers stole America, they had long since disempowered the Christian Monarchies of Europe and looted their kingdoms. Maybe this “Professor Marvel” fellow knew something about the future that other folks didn’t. With a human skull peering down from its painted perch above the door inside his wagon, the good Professor lectured Dorothy of the Priests of Isis and Osiris and the days of the Pharaohs of Egypt.
When Dorothy Gale and her new friends emerged from the forest they were elated to see Emerald City before them, only a short jaunt away. The Wicked Witch of the West, desperate for the Ruby Slippers that Dorothy was wearing, would have to make her move before our heroes were inside the walls. A significant point here is that in the original book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, (39 years earlier), the Slippers were not ruby, or red, but silver. At the time the book was written America still had all its gold and silver, and the value of one ounce of gold was set at 15 ounces of silver — silver being the more plentiful of the two metals. Just as the Silver Slippers carried Dorothy, America’s stockpile of silver and gold — backing the currency — carried the country to a position or pre-eminence throughout the world at the time. But, as mentioned, when the movie came out in 1939 the Slippers were not silver, but red.
Between 1916 and 1933, most of America’s gold was rounded up by the private Federal Reserve Bank and shipped off to the Fed owners in England, Germany and France. The reason for this was that the use of Federal Reserve Notes (FRN’s) carried an interest penalty that could only be paid in gold. Our previous currency, United States Notes (USN’s), carried no such interest requirement – but such was the bargain that came with the Federal Reserve Notes. When bankruptcy was declared in 1933, Americans were required to turn in all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates by May the 1st – May Day — the anniversary of the birth of Communism in 1776. Talking to people who were alive at the time, you may find out that the general sentiment toward such thievery bordered on a second revolution. Maybe it was just too much of a clue, or too much salt in the wound for Dorothy to be skipping down the “Yellow Brick Road” in a pair of “Silver Slippers” so, for whatever reason, a color less likely to annoy or provoke was selected.
With regard to the choice of “Ruby,” or red–colored Slippers, one explanation is this: On documents and the like, red is a very significant color. It signifies “Private,” as opposed to “Public.” Your new Social Security Card has a red serial number on the reverse. The red Registered Mail sticker says “United States Post Office Department” – all other mail is marked “United States Postal Service.” But no matter their color in the Movie, the Wicked Witch of the West had big plans to get her hands on the Slippers before Dorothy and crew could make it to Emerald city.
Her tactic was to drug them all into unconsciousness by covering the countryside with poppy flowers, or “poppies,” the source of heroin, opium and morphine, and then waltz in and snatch the Slippers. In other words, the best way to boost the gold was to somehow dull the senses of the American people (Note: LSD was created in 1939 by Dr. Albert Hoffman). The poppies/drugs worked on Dorothy, the Lion and Toto, the flesh and blood entities, but had no effect on the Scarecrow or the Tin Man, the artificial entities. The two of them cried out for help and Glenda, the Good Witch of the North, answered their prayers with a blanket of snow and nullified the narcotic effect of the poppies on Dorothy, the Lion and Toto.
As they scampered toward Emerald city — the city of green (Federal Reserve Notes, the new fiat “money,” or “money by decree”), we heard The Munchkins singing on the glory of the Wizard’s creation:
You’re out of the woods,
You’re out of the dark,
You’re out of the night,
Step into the sun, step into the light,
Keep straight ahead for,
the most glorious place on the face of the Earth or stars!
The foregoing jingle abounds with Illuminist-Luciferian symbols and metaphors re; darkness and light.
The Wicked Witch of the West made her home in a round, medieval watchtower, ancient symbol of the Knights Templar of Freemasonry, who are given to practice witchcraft and also credited as the originators of modern banking, circa 1099 A.D. The Wicked Witch of the West was also dressed in black, the color symbolizing the planet Saturn, sacred icon of the Knights Templar and the color of choice of judges and priests for their robes. Who was the Wicked Witch of the West? Remember, in the first part of the film her counterpart was “Almira Gulch,” who, according to Aunt Em, “owned half the county.” Miss Gulch alleged that Dorothy’s dog, Toto, had bitten her. She came to the farm with an “Order from the Sheriff” demanding that they surrender Toto to her custody. Aunt Em was not immediately co-operative, and answered Miss Gulch’s allegations that Toto had bitten her.
“He’s really gentle. With gentle people, that is.”
Could “gentle” really mean “Gentile”? (see Gentile) When Miss Gulch defied them to withhold Toto and “go against the law,” dear old Aunt Em was relegated to “pushing the Party line” for Big Brother. She dutifully succumbed to the pressure and counseled Dorothy reluctantly;
“We can’t go against the law, Dorothy. I’m afraid poor Toto will have to go.”
When Dorothy refused to surrender Toto, Miss Gulch lashed out:
“If you don’t hand over the dog I’ll bring a damage suit that’ll take your whole farm.”
Today 70% of all attorneys in the world reside in the west – America, to be exact – and 95% of all lawsuits in the world are filed under US jurisdiction. The Wicked Witch of the West and Miss Gulch, my dear friends, represent judges and attorneys: i.e. the American legal system (including the attorney-run US Congress), executioner and primary henchmen for transferring all wealth in America – everything – (And Australia and all other countries – Ed.) from the people over to the banks and the government (see Note at bar). The Wicked Witch of the West wanted the Silver Slippers – the precious metals – and her counterpart, Miss Gulch, wanted to take Toto. What does the word “Toto” mean in “attorney language,” i.e. Latin? “Everything!”
Dorothy and the gang fell for the Wizard’s illusion in the beginning, but soon wised up and discovered the Wizard for what he was: a confidence man. When asked about helping the Scarecrow/Straw man, among other babblings about “getting a brain” and “universities” the Wizard also cited “the land of ’E Pluribus Unum,” which is Latin for “One out of many” i.e. converting the many into one = New World Order, or Novus Ordo Seclorum, a Latin phrase placed on the American One Dollar Bill shortly after bankruptcy. He also proudly revealed/confessed that he was:
“Born and brad in the heart of the Western wilderness, an old Kansas man myself!”
The bankers did pretty well in Europe, but as the Wizard pointed out, they made a killing in the “Western wilderness,” with the theft of American gold, labor and property from the – quoting John D. Rockefeller – “grateful and responsive rural folk” who populated the country at the time.
When Dorothy asked Glenda, the Good Witch of the North (Santa Claus, Christianity), for help in getting back to Kansas, Glenda replied:
“You don’t need to be helped. You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.”
Translation: you’ve always had the right and power to reclaim your sovereignty, you just forgot. The actual act of reclaiming your sovereignty – remedy (see remedy) – a simple UCC-1 Form to the Secretary of State, and Invoice and Bill of Exchange to the Secretary of the Treasury, can be completed from scratch in a few hours.
America and Americans have intimate firsthand knowledge of the heartless mechanics of the laws of commerce, religiously applied by the unregistered foreign agents at the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS, collection agency for the private Federal Reserve Bank, was consulted under the UCC in 1954 and has been operating strictly in that realm ever since.
You may have wondered what is the meaning behind the words in the title “The Wizard of Oz.” Look them up in the dictionary. Like almost everything else, it’s right out there in the open for you to see if you will just look closely enough. One definition of “wizard” is: “a person of high professional skill or knowledge.” “O-z” is an abbreviation of “onza,” o-n-z-a, the Italian word for “ounce,’ or “ounces,” the unit of measurement of gold, silver and other precious metals. No matter how large the quantity of gold or silver being discussed, the amount is always expressed in ounces. E.g. rather than “hundreds of tons” of gold, it’s “so many million ounces” of gold. As attested by the factual history of this country: “The Wizard of Oz.” was The Wizard of Ounces.
Everything worked out for Dorothy, i.e. the American people, in the end and she “made it home.” Meaning: there is remedy in law (see remedy). It’s there – it was just encoded and disguised and camouflaged. Fortunately, the code has been cracked, and there is a way home, just like in the movie. Like Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home.” – and there isn’t! There’s nothing like sovereignty for a sovereign! (see note at vice-admiralty courts) We have commercial remedy in the Redemption process. Will you continue to be conned by the confidence men and worship the Wizard’s light show, or will you wise up like Dorothy did and “look behind the scenes”?
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