Bad Faith and the American Indian: Laura Cornelius Kellogg and the Problem of Democratic Inclusion.

This article examines Oneida writer and activist Laura Cornelius Kellogg’s 1920 hybrid text *Our Democracy and the American Indian*, which strategically employs U.S. settler legal concepts—particularly private property—to critique the federal government’s bad faith treatment of Native peoples and to advocate for Indigenous sovereignty. Kellogg repurposes the fee simple form of private property ownership, typically used by the U.S. government to dispossess Native people, into a collective ownership model through her “Lolomi Plan,” aiming to preserve Indigenous autonomy and wealth. The article situates Kellogg’s work alongside contemporary legal struggles of the Oneida Nation, such as the 2005 Supreme Court case *City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York*, illustrating how Indigenous peoples continue to navigate and strategically deploy settler legal frameworks—often marked by bad faith—to assert sovereignty. Kellogg’s approach highlights the complex interplay between Indigenous political traditions, settler colonial law, and the ongoing challenges of Native self-governance within U.S. legal and political systems.