Joe Rogan Experience #1442 - Shannon O'Loughlin

O’Loughlin argues that U.S. policy—from land theft and massacres to boarding schools, child removals, and current legal attacks on Native rights—meets international definitions of genocide and continues today in structural forms.

The 19th‑century Supreme Court cases Johnson v. McIntosh, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, and Worcester v. Georgia enshrined the Doctrine of Discovery, labeled tribes “inferior” and “savages,” and created the guardian–ward model that courts still cite to limit Native rights.

Blood quantum was imposed by the U.S. as a tool to ‘weed out’ Indians and reduce obligations; tribes themselves determine citizenship through their own laws, kinship, culture, and community ties, not consumer DNA tests or purity myths.

Despite laws like NAGPRA, O’Loughlin notes at least ~200,000 Native remains sit in U.S. museum boxes, many more objects and remains are overseas or in private collections, and tribes must fight slow, often hostile institutions and auction houses to repatriate them.

While casinos have funded language revitalization, schools, and jobs, states and the federal government still control key aspects (e.g., Class III compacts, taxation, jurisdiction over non-Indians), revealing sovereignty is conditional and frequently undermined when tribes prosper.