Introduction

Introduction to a global volume on Christian Discovery, linking law, religion, and pedagogy, with Indigenous sovereignty and decolonial justice today.

Flesh of Words: Confrontation, Navigation, and Integrity in the English Classroom

Hurtado uses Critical Race Theory and Latina feminisms to show how multiethnic curricula can confront colonial legacies and teach resistance in class.

The Chosen People at Grouse Mountain

Felese challenges conquest-based land values and shows Indigenous relational worldviews offer life-affirming alternatives to extraction and alienation

Expecting Excellence in Education: When Content Conditions Class Consciousness

Chaness links white supremacy, settler colonialism, and anti-Indian racism, showing how Indigenous values and pedagogy reshape critical classroom practice.

The Medieval Origins of Religious White Supremacy: English Imperialism, Crusade Defeats, and the Doctrine of Discovery

Callan traces how medieval English myths, crusade defeat, and Irish colonization shaped Christian white supremacy and fed the global Doctrine of Discovery.

Unselling the Classroom: Confronting History and Ourselves

Berlin urges teachers to confront settler colonialism and white supremacy by centering Indigenous history critical pedagogy, and accountability today.

Deconstructing the Erie Canal: Three Lessons for its Next Century

In this bicentennial reflection on the Erie Canal, Renee Barry examines how celebratory public histories mask the canal's foundation in settler colonial violence on unceded Haudenosaunee land. Drawing on archival research, heritage tourism analysis, and museum narratives, the essay deconstructs myths of progress, civilization, and national destiny embedded in iconic commemorations such as the Wedding of the Waters. Barry argues that these narratives normalize environmental damage, erase Indigenous sovereignty, and recast genocidal dispossession as American achievement. The article links canal ideology to Christian dominance, European expansion, and the legal legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, while also tracing how revivalist and reform movements reproduced similar hierarchies. Blending critical history with self-reflection, Barry calls for a different future in which Erie Canal memory is reoriented around Indigenous leadership, sacred relationships to place, and accountable ecological repair rather than triumphalist nostalgia. She urges institutions, educators, and visitors to confront inherited narratives and support decolonial stewardship in practice.

Silencing the Doctrine of Discovery – The Brazilian Process: Accidental Discoveries, Secret Manuscripts, Imaginary Lines and Myths

Alencar traces how the Doctrine of Discovery shaped Brazil through church-backed silence, racial myths, and colonial violence, urging decolonial accountability.