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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.
Published: 24 December 2024
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
Animal Nations and the Doctrine of Discovery
Democracy: 'Democracy didn’t come across on the Mayflower. Indeed not. Nor with the Niña nor Santa Maria. Certainly not. Democracy was here. It was in full flower. It was rampant. It was all over. All nations were free, and that includes the buffalo nation, that includes the fish nations and the nations of trees. They were all free.'
Tracy Basile
On September 8, 2021 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) voted to renounce the Doctrine of Discovery by adopting Motion 048, now Resolution 119 for the Renunciation of the Doctrine of Discovery to Rediscover care for Mother Earth.
Christopher Sudol
The Doctrine of Discovery and Christian Zionism
The Doctrine of Discovery (DoD) has a well-documented and researched connection to the colonization of Turtle Island. Its ideology, however, reaches far beyond the continent’s bounds. What is less researched is the DoD’s connection to European colonialism in the rest of the world.
Jonathan Brenneman
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Manifest Destiny is a nineteenth-century term designating an expansionist ideology grounded in the Doctrine of Christian Discovery and republican ideals that shaped the westward development of the United States through legal, religious, military, educational, and other cultural, structural, and systemic means; its effects are present in the twenty-first century.
Robert Michael Ruehl
How did the world come to be? How did humans come to be? What is the origin of all living beings? The myth-history of who we are begins with the creation stories we tell. These stories guide us on the path to who we will become and how we understand ourselves and our relation to the planet and the other life on Earth. We settler colonialists have our origin story in the Christian Bible, the fiction that set our Western worldview on the path to Christian male domination of the earth and women. It set us spiritually, politically, economically and socially in a trajectory toward destruction. This is the best knowledge I can share with you after over 50 years of learning from Indigenous people, studying their history and examining my own settler colonialist world view.
Sally Roesch Wagner
Superseding the Doctrine of Discovery: World Water One
Ten years since the First Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery International Conference held at Arizona State University West on April 1920, 2013, the Continental Commission Abya Yala will advance into the next cycle of INTENT and ENGAGEMENT towards the objectives and goals of the local-regional, continental-global initiative which has remained active across the continent throughout this most recent chapter of our collective history as Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala.
Tupac Enrique Acosta
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