To Justitia, xoxo Cicero

The 1877 Nez Perce War was a brief, yet rhetorically rich, conflict for expansion in the United States of America. While much research has thoroughly analyzed these events and deemed it to have been a just or unjust war, there is opportunity to plunge into the beliefs that enabled decisions to be made, and whether justice truly manifested. Using Althusser’s concept of how Ideological State Apparatuses influence belief, Mignolo’s exposure of the Eurocentric positioning of modernity, Agamben’s work on the State of Exception, and Miller’s detailing of the Doctrine of Discovery, as well as Manifest Destiny, this work will trace events back to their root in the respective society under discussion. With Cicero’s texts on Duties, Laws, and the State, a measure for justice is developed for weighing the actions and words of both the Nimiipuu and the United States of America during this event.