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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
In this article, I examine ways in which Syracuse University, a higher education institution located in Central New York, was founded from settler colonialism vis-à-vis the Doctrine of Discovery.
Hugh Burnam
Despite being a tool of colonization and imperialism worldwide, the Doctrine of Discovery’s importance and influence has been overlooked in Brazilian literature and studies. This article examines the Doctrine’s impact on the Brazilian Indigenous people and environment, highlighting the need to acknowledge and understand the effects and manifestations of the Doctrine of Discovery in Brazil. It explores intersections of the Doctrine with Indigenous rights and sovereignty. It argues that understanding the Doctrine is essential to move forward respectfully and sustainably with Indigenous people and the environment.
Telma Alencar
The Regalian Doctrine: The Philippine Case
The Philippines has over 14-17 million remaining Indigenous peoples belonging to an estimated 110 ethnolinguistic communities (between 10-20% of the total population). It also boasts of some of the most progressive legislation in the world when it comes to protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples. One such law is the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997 with the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) as its implementing arm.
S. Lily Mendoza
The Myth of Divine Right and the Doctrine of Discovery
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Kenneth Chestek
Part 1: The Origins of the Combahee River Collective Statement
Asia, Africa, and Europe all meet in the Americas to labor over the dialectics of free and unfree, but what of the Americas themselves and the prior peoples upon whom that labor took place?” ~Jodi Byrd, Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism
Sarah Nahar
Part 2: The beginning of an Analysis of Settler Colonialism Emerges at AMC 2022
In the 1600s when enslaved Africans disembarked en masse and travel weary to this land mass, they arrived in a place where hundreds of Indigenous groups lived since time immemorial. Since that moment The majority of the interactions between Black people and Indigenous Peoples living in the so-called United States occur(red) in the bloody context of settler colonial imperialism.
Sarah Nahar
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