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
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 – a legal and religious rationale by which European powers claimed the right to discover and claim lands inhabited by non-Christian peoples.
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INTRODUCTION #
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 – a legal and religious rationale by which European powers claimed the right to discover and claim lands inhabited by non-Christian peoples. Focusing primarily on the 19th through the 21st centuries, these essays illustrate how Johnson and the Doctrine of Christian Discovery have global import to Turtle Island (especially the United States and Canada) and Aotearoa (New Zealand).
About #
Grounding this conversation in the Two Row Wampum method, the editors of this series have worked to include both Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices so we can journey side by side without violating the waters down the river of life. We recognize the urgency and need for more inclusion of indigenous voices to reaffirm our proper relationship with the natural world in the staid disciplines of religion, law, history, anthropology, and cultural studies. We hope this series inspires generative conversations around Johnson and the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.
Articles
The Contemporary Presence of Discovery’s Assertion in Canada
any groups and organizations have taken actions to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery. In an opinion piece published in Canada’s Globe and Mail in Aug 2022, Douglas Sanderson asserts that the Doctrine of Discovery had little influence on the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the French and English who treated Indigenous nations as equals. The Doctrine of Discovery seeks to explain how European nations dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their land and rights. Sanderon claims that giving force to the Doctrine of Discovery (which he understands as an American legal fiction) in Canada misrepresents Indigenous history. Further, Mr. Sanderson explains that after the invention of this doctrine which, “neatly explained Indigenous dispossession in a sentence or two” no one cared about the past and “the story of relationships based in diplomacy and alliance slipped almost from memory.”
Mark Tremblay
Order, Economy, and Legality:Johnson v. M’Intosh after Two Hundred Years
Mother Earth is the wellspring of indigenous culture, religion, and economic life. It forms the identity of Native Americans as indigenous peoples.rom the beginning, the appropriation and distribution of Indigenous land had to be orderly. Settler-colonists needed a system to avoid haphazard, disorganized tribal land transactions and achieve their goal of the private commodification of the expanding American frontier.
Andrew Little
Federal Anti-Indian Law: The Legal Entrapment of Indigenous Peoples
2023 is the bi-centennial year of Johnson v. McIntosh, the case that put ‘Christian discovery’ into US property law in a way that simultaneously created ‘federal Indian law’: The 200th year since the imposition of domination on the basis of a religious and racist theory of humankind. A domination that two-hundred years later is still considered ‘law.’
Peter d’Errico
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