200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh:Law, Religion, and Native American Lands

Produced through a partnership between Canopy Forum, the Indigenous Values Initiative (IVI), and Syracuse University, this series of essays brings together religion scholars, legal scholars, and Indigenous activists to explore the problematic legacy of Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823) and the 15th century Doctrine of (Christian) Discovery

Introduction to 200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh: Law, Religion, and Native American Lands

As historians of religions, we are interested in myths, history, and creation narratives. The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Johnson v. M’Intosh (1823) includes all these elements. The Johnson decision illustrates one of the powerful ways in which Christianity has played a hegemonic role within American law and culture at the expense of Mother Earth and all living beings, especially Indigenous peoples.

Johnson v. M’Intosh and the Missing Cover of the Jigsaw Puzzle

February 28, 2023 marked 200 years since Chief Justice John Marshall delivered a unanimous decision for the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Johnson & Graham’s Lessee v. M’Intosh. This decision enshrined into the system of ideas and arguments called “U.S. law,” the assertion that the Christian nations of Europe, and their political successors, had a right of discovery and domination (“ultimate dominion”) against the original nations and peoples of this continent. At one point, the Court used the phrase “natives who were heathens,” language which is traced to the Bible and to Vatican documents from the fifteenth century.

Johnson v. M’Intosh, Wi Parata v. Bishop of Wellington, and the Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery in Aotearoa-New Zealand

Here in Aotearoa-New Zealand the doctrine of discovery is, for many, a very new concept. If people knew of it at all, they assumed it to be relevant to the history of the Americas, but not to Aotearoa-New Zealand. This is in part due to our preoccupation with the colonial fiction of a “kind settlement.” A concerted grassroots campaign organized during the 2019 national commemorations of James Cook’s invasion in 1769 resulted in heightened awareness of his imperial intent. Consequently, there has been a somewhat belated awakening for Aotearoa-New Zealand to the reality of how the doctrine of discovery arrived here and has come to shape our existence.

The Legacy of the Right to Control Land and Dependency

This article is part of our “200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh: Law, Religion, and Native American Lands” series. - Legacy embeds the actions and inactions of those before us into the current legal, political, and social processes. Reverberating through history are the echoes of words that canonized inequity in the systemic structures of federalism in the United States. In 1823,

The International Law of Colonialism:Johnson v. M’Intosh and the Doctrine of Discovery Applied Worldwide

This article is part of our “200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh: Law, Religion, and Native American Lands” series. The International Law of Colonialism:Johnson v. M’Intosh and the Doctrine of Discovery Applied Worldwide

Johnson v. M’Intosh, Plenary Power,and Our Colonial Constitution

Wife and Child of Bull Plume” by Kathryn Woodman Leighton (Wikimedia PD-US) This article is part of our “200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh: Law, Religion, and Native American Lands” series. In Johnson v. M’Intosh, Chief Justice John Marshall articulated the doctrine of discovery as a justification for the legal subordination of Native people and their rights.

However, Extravagant The Pretensions Of Johnson V. M’Intosh

The George Washington Belt, the Two Row Wampum, and the Hiawatha Belt. The Canandaigua, Two Row, and Haudenosaunee Confederacy Wampum Belts. Image by Lindsay Speer, 2008. This article is part of our “200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh: Law, Religion, and Native American Lands” series.

Did Pope Alexander VI Authorize England’s Colonization of North America?

Shortly before Thanksgiving 2016, Episcopalian priest John Floberg held up a copy of Pope Alexander VI’s 1493 papal bull Inter caetera before a crowd of hundreds of protesters and clerics at North Dakota’s Oceti Sakowin Camp. He asked a committee of Indigenous elders to authorize its burning. They did, the paper went up in flames, and the crowd erupted in applause.

Haaland v. Brackeen and the Logic of Discovery

In 1823, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in Johnson v M’Intosh, the first of the Marshall trilogy, infamous for its attack on Indigenous sovereignty. Two hundred years later, it seems as if things are different — indeed, it seems as if things are better — for Indigenous peoples in the United States. We have a Laguna Pueblo woman Secretary of the Interior, an investigation into the horrors of Native American boarding schools has resulted in a report for the first time in U.S. history, and the government has even acknowledged the genocide of Indigenous peoples (8). However, some argue that Haaland v. Brackeen, which the Supreme Court is getting ready to decide this term, is threatening to inflict the biggest blow to Indigenous sovereignty since Johnson. What are they worried about?