Parable: How the United States Kills their Citizens Slowly

There was once a kingdom where the ruler promised his people abundance, freedom, and security. Every season, the King's messengers assured the people that the tables would remain full and that everyone willing to labor would prosper. Yet, as the years passed, the harvest no longer came from fertile fields but from factories that crafted meals pleasing to the eye while slowly weakening the body. The people ate because they trusted the King's table, never noticing that every feast left them a little more dependent than before.

The laborers rose before sunrise and returned home after sunset, spending their strength building treasures they would never possess. The more they worked, the richer the palace became. Gold filled the halls of the powerful while the workers struggled to feed their own families. Whenever they questioned why their burdens grew heavier, they were told to work harder, consume more, and trust that prosperity was just beyond the next season.

The wealthiest merchants sat beside the throne, celebrating as the kingdom's riches multiplied. They discovered that a weary people were easier to rule, a sick people were easier to profit from, and a divided people rarely looked toward the palace. So they kept the tables full, the hands busy, and the minds distracted.

But among the crowds, a few began to wonder why the King's feast never truly satisfied and why endless labor never seemed to bring freedom. They started asking whether the banquet had been prepared to nourish the people—or to keep them dependent while others grew rich.

This is the story of a kingdom whose greatest chains were not forged from iron, but from appetite, dependence, and the pursuit of wealth.

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What Is an Obelisk?

An obelisk is a tall, four-sided monument that gradually tapers toward the top, ending in a pyramid-shaped point known as a pyramidion. First created by the ancient Egyptians, obelisks were sacred monuments that symbolized the sun, divine power, and eternal life. Today, they are commonly used as memorials, monuments, and striking architectural features around the world.

Key Characteristics

Structure:
An obelisk rises from a square or rectangular base and gradually narrows as it ascends, culminating in a pointed pyramidion.

Materials:
Ancient Egyptian obelisks were carved from a single massive block of stone, most often red granite. Modern obelisks are typically constructed from multiple stone sections, concrete, steel, or other building materials.

Symbolism:
To the ancient Egyptians, obelisks were closely associated with the sun god Ra. They represented the sun's rays, divine protection, strength, and the enduring legacy of a pharaoh. Many were erected at temple entrances as symbols of devotion and royal authority.

Historical and Famous 

Ancient Egypt

Egyptian pharaohs commonly erected pairs of obelisks at the entrances of temples dedicated to their gods. One remarkable example is the Hanging Obelisk of Ramses II, displayed at the Grand Egyptian Museum. It is uniquely elevated so visitors can view inscriptions carved on its underside—details that would normally remain hidden.

Washington, D.C., United States

The Washington Monument is the tallest obelisk in the world, standing approximately 555 feet (169 meters). Built to honor George Washington, it remains one of America's most recognizable landmarks.

New York City, United States

Cleopatra's Needle, located in Central Park, is an authentic ancient Egyptian obelisk carved more than 3,500 years ago during the reign of Thutmose III. It was presented to the United States by Egypt in the late nineteenth century and remains one of the oldest man-made monuments in North America.

Rome, Italy

Rome contains the greatest number of ancient obelisks anywhere in the world. Many were transported from Egypt by Roman emperors as symbols of imperial conquest and prestige. Among them, the Lateran Obelisk is the tallest standing ancient Egyptian obelisk still in existence.

Deuteronomy 10:14: Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it."

1 Chronicles 29:11: Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours.

A colony is a territory or settlement under the political and economic control of a distant parent country. The term also broadly refers to a group of individuals (people, animals, or microorganisms) of the same species living together in close association

On May 14, 1607, approximately 105 colonists from the Virginia Company settled on a peninsula along the James River, where they founded Jamestown. It became Britain's first permanent settlement in the New World and the first capital of what would later become the colony of Virginia.

What followed was a struggle among European powers for control of the territory that now forms the eastern United States. England, the Netherlands, France, and Spain all sought to establish and expand their North American colonies. Ultimately, the British emerged as the dominant colonial power. They seized New Netherland—including present-day Delaware, New York, and New Jersey—from the Dutch, limited Spanish expansion northward from Florida by establishing the colony of Georgia, and took control of France's vast North American territories following the French and Indian War.

1. Virginia (1607)
2. Massachusetts (1620)
3. New Hampshire (1623)
4. New York (1624)
5. Maryland (1634)
6. Connecticut (1635)

Deuteronomy 10:14: Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it."

1 Chronicles 29:11: Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours.

In the early twentieth century, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., asserted that, while the judiciary’s power to strike down acts of Congress was not essential to the national government, “the Union would be imperiled if we could not make that declaration as to the laws of the several states.” Fletcher v. Peck (1810) was the first time the Supreme Court asserted that important power, striking down a statute passed by the Georgia legislature. In holding that the state law violated the Contracts Clause of the Constitution, the Court also embraced a broad interpretation of that provision, protecting business interests from some forms of state interference.

Legal Debates before Fletcher

While the Constitution contemplated that the courts might hear cases “arising under” its provisions, it did not explicitly mention whether federal judges had the power to invalidate state statutes. During the Constitution’s ratification, some prominent figures argued that it implicitly required courts to strike down unconstitutional legislation. In Federalist no. 78, for example, Alexander Hamilton asserted that “[n]o legislative act . . . contrary to the constitution can be valid” and defended “the right of the courts to pronounce legislative acts void.”

 In 1788, future Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth assured delegates at Connecticut’s ratifying convention (a body formed to debate the adoption of the Constitution) that “upright, independent judges” would guard the Constitution by striking down laws violating its protections. Future Chief Justice John Marshall, who would later write the Court’s opinion in Fletcher, made similar statements to the Virginia convention. Some critics of the new Constitution also suggested that judges would invalidate state and federal legislation, though they saw this as a flaw in the document’s design. The Antifederalist “Brutus,” for example, referred to this authority as an “uncontroulable power.

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Supreme Court invalidated part of a federal law for the first time. While it may seem to follow logically from that result that the federal courts had the power to strike down state legislation, this was not entirely clear at the time. Most of the Constitutional restrictions on government power only applied to the federal government, in part because many worried about the potential for the centralized federal government to impinge on the powers of the states, many of whose governments were older and more democratic than the federal system.

The Case

Fletcher arose from a complex and corrupt land deal. The state of Georgia claimed sovereignty over a massive area of land in modern-day Alabama and Mississippi known as “Yazoo.” Although native tribes also claimed sovereignty over much of the land, and had settled parts of it before Georgia’s statehood, property speculators wanted to invest in the land and sell it to European-American settlers and businesses. In 1795, the state legislature sold 35 million acres of land in the region to private speculators at a very low price.

Shortly after the state sold the lands, it was discovered that most of the legislators voting for the land-grant law had been bribed or owned stakes in the businesses purchasing the property. After several lawmakers were voted out of office in response to these revelations of corruption, the legislature declared the earlier grants void. This declaration was different from most legislative acts because it did not merely repeal the earlier sales; it declared that they had—at least in legal terms—never happened. Indeed, the new legislators ordered the original law publicly burned to emphasize this point. However, this second law arguably implicated one of the few constitutional restrictions on state power prior to the Civil War, as the Contracts Clause of Article I, section 10 prohibited states from passing any “law impairing the obligation of contracts.”

Several years after the legislature revoked the land grants, John Peck, a speculator from Massachusetts, purchased some of the land in question and subsequently sold it to Robert Fletcher, a colleague from New Hampshire. Fletcher sued Peck for breach of contract, alleging that Peck had falsely represented that he had good title to the land. Peck defended the suit by arguing that the Georgia legislature had violated the Contracts Clause by improperly interfering with the original land grant contract. Since the law was invalid, he claimed, he had held good title to the land and had every right to sell it to Fletcher. In fact, both parties likely wanted the titles ruled valid so they could profit from the transaction and, perhaps, defeat other native claims to Yazoo lands.

The parties voluntarily postponed their case in the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Massachusetts for several years while Congress debated a plan to compensate speculators whose land grants had been revoked. After nothing came of this proposal, however, they resumed the suit, which the court decided in Peck’s favor, ruling that the Georgia legislature’s attempt to void the original land sales violated the Contracts Clause. Although this was the result for which Fletcher had likely hoped, he appealed, apparently believing that a Supreme Court decision on the matter would carry more weight and apply to claims on the Yazoo lands made by speculators nationwide (much of the property originally included in the corrupt land grants had been sold to out-of-state speculators).

The Supreme Court’s Ruling

The parties were represented before the Supreme Court by two of the great lawyers of the early republic. Fletcher’s attorney was Luther Martin, who had been one of the leading Antifederalists during ratification debates over the Constitution. Despite his reputation as a talented lawyer and political speaker, however, Martin had succumbed to alcoholism by the time he argued the case. Indeed, Chief Justice Marshall had to postpone proceedings at one point to allow Martin to sober up. Peck was represented by Joseph Story, the brilliant young lawyer from Massachusetts who would soon become the youngest Supreme Court justice in history and is now widely regarded as one of the primary shapers of constitutional law before the Civil War.

Although Marshall initially expressed some reluctance to hear what appeared to be a “feigned” case, he wrote an opinion for the Court that ultimately delivered the result for which the speculators had likely hoped. The initial land grants, Marshall reasoned, were contracts between the state and the purchasers and the legislature could not invalidate those contracts without impairing their obligations in a manner that violated the Contracts Clause. 

While he acknowledged the concern that the original legislative process had been infected by bribery, Marshall reasoned that courts should be wary of interpreting the motives of lawmakers. Moreover, he suggested that it would be unfair to punish innocent purchasers of the land for the corruption of legislators. Marshall also reasoned that “general principles” of law prohibited legislatures from passing retroactive laws. Though he did not fully explain the sources of these principles, many scholars assume that Marshall referred to “natural law,” a body of inherent moral principles. He compared the Georgia statute to an ex post facto law, which retroactively punishes someone for an act that was not a crime when he committed it. Such laws, he reasoned, led to governmental instability and were unfair to citizens, who could not rely on the law as it stands.

Justice William Johnson, Jr., wrote a separate concurring opinion that, while reaching the same result as Marshall, argued that the Georgia legislature had not violated the Contracts Clause. Nevertheless, he reasoned that the law voiding the land grants had violated the general principles of law Marshall had laid out. Johnson also lamented the apparently collusive nature of the lawsuit, but determined (based on Martin’s and Story’s eminent reputations) that the suit had not been brought for illegitimate purposes.

Aftermath and Legacy

Although the Court’s decision rendered Georgia’s attempt to void the initial land grants unconstitutional, it did not resolve the complex issues of disputed ownership or set the appropriate level of compensation for dispossessed landowners in Yazoo. Indeed, those issues were not truly resolved until Congress passed legislation compensating speculators in 1814. Nevertheless, two of the central legal principles the Court established in Fletcher v. Peck remain important to this day. 

The federal courts have used the power to strike down unconstitutional state legislation on several occasions. The Court’s desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and its decision protecting a woman’s right to end her pregnancy in Roe v. Wade (1973) are prominent examples. Similarly, the Court’s broad interpretation of the Contracts Clause played an important part in the development of its corporate jurisprudence. In Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), for example, the Court determined that corporate charters are a form of contract with the state and that states could not alter the terms of the charter at will.

The At-sik-hata Nation of Yamassee Moors identifies itself as an Indigenous and sovereign tribal nation with ancestral ties to regions that include present-day Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, and Tennessee. The Nation asserts that it possesses inherent rights of self-determination, self-identification, and tribal sovereignty under domestic and international legal principles.

According to the submission, historical events such as the 1715 Yamassee Uprising and the Trail of Tears resulted in the forced displacement of numerous Indigenous peoples, including the Yamassee, Choctaw, Cherokee, Seminole, Yuchi, and others from their ancestral territories. The report argues that these removals caused lasting harm to Indigenous communities and contributed to the loss of land, culture, and political autonomy.

The submission further contends that descendants of Africans and Indigenous peoples in the United States have faced historical barriers to recognition, citizenship, and cultural identity. It asserts that many individuals of African descent possess Indigenous ancestry through historical relationships, intermarriage, adoption, and shared community ties with Native nations throughout North America.

Historical Context

The report references historical records and congressional acknowledgments concerning slavery, forced assimilation, and the removal of Indigenous peoples. It argues that African Americans were often stripped of their names, languages, cultural identities, and ancestral connections during slavery and subsequent discriminatory periods. The submission maintains that these actions contributed to the loss of knowledge regarding Indigenous heritage among many descendants.

The report also highlights historical accounts suggesting the presence of diverse populations in the Americas prior to European colonization and argues that conventional narratives concerning Indigenous identity should be reexamined through a broader historical lens.

Alleged Human Rights Concerns

The At-sik-hata Nation of Yamassee Moors alleges that the United States has failed to fully recognize and protect the rights of individuals and communities who identify as Indigenous descendants outside of federally recognized tribal structures. The submission asserts that individuals who claim Indigenous heritage may face discrimination, skepticism, social exclusion, and legal obstacles when attempting to exercise rights associated with self-identification and self-determination.

The report further alleges that government institutions have not consistently honored commitments relating to Indigenous rights, tribal sovereignty, and international human rights standards. It argues that these shortcomings have contributed to ongoing social, cultural, and political disadvantages for affected communities.

According to the submission, the failure to adequately recognize Indigenous identity, cultural heritage, and self-governance rights has resulted in conditions that the authors characterize as continuing forms of discrimination and marginalization.

Legal and International Framework

The submission references various domestic and international instruments, including executive orders, congressional resolutions, human rights treaties, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). It argues that these authorities support the rights of Indigenous peoples to determine their own identity, maintain their cultural traditions, exercise self-government, and preserve their ancestral heritage.

The report maintains that Indigenous identity should not be defined exclusively by government institutions and that communities possess the inherent right to identify, organize, and govern themselves in accordance with their traditions, history, and cultural heritage.

Conclusions

The At-sik-hata Nation of Yamassee Moors concludes that Indigenous peoples and their descendants continue to face significant challenges in obtaining recognition, protection of cultural rights, and meaningful implementation of self-determination principles. The submission argues that greater compliance with international human rights standards is necessary to address historical injustices and ongoing concerns.

Recommendations

1. Fully implement the principles contained within the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in domestic law and policy.
2. Strengthen protections for tribal sovereignty, self-determination, and Indigenous cultural identity.
3. Promote accurate and comprehensive education regarding the history, diversity, and contributions of Indigenous peoples in North America.
4. Review historical grievances and claims involving Indigenous communities and establish mechanisms for accountability, dialogue, and reconciliation.
5. Ensure that individuals and communities who identify as Indigenous are afforded equal protection, respect, and access to human rights guaranteed under domestic and international law.

The submission respectfully requests that relevant human rights bodies examine these concerns and encourage measures that advance Indigenous rights, cultural preservation, self-determination, and equal treatment under the law.