Outcome Documents for
200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh (JvM): Indigenous Responses to the Religious Foundations of Racism
This website is the official archive of the outcome publications from the Henry J. Luce Foundation Grant Funded project “200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh (JvM): Indigenous Responses to the Religious Foundations of Racism". Professor Philip P. Arnold was the PI on this project which ran from 2022-2024. Project activities included a conference, podcasts, and various types of publications.
Summary
“200 Years of Johnson v. M’Intosh (JvM): Indigenous Responses to the Religious Foundations of Racism,” is a collaborative initiative made possible through relationships developed over 30 years between academic and Indigenous communities. At its core, the project seeks to interrogate and critically examine connections between the Doctrine of Christian Discovery (DOCD), the Catholic Papal Bulls that undergird the Doctrine, and the Doctrine’s pernicious influence on United States Indian Law today.
The 200th anniversary of JvM provides an excellent moment to challenge the theology and jurisprudence of DOCD and this critical Supreme Court decision. The project will deliver a range of digital products and written works combined with a host of public outreach activities to raise awareness about the harmful impacts of the DOCD and provide support for a global movement of Indigenous People’s that seek to repudiate it.
Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, 485 U.S. 439
In 1988 the United States Supreme Court declared constitutional the federal government’s development plan in the High Country, aboriginal homeland of the Karuk Nation of Northern California, sacred to them as well as to the Yurok and Tolowa Nations, and managed today by the US Forest Service as the Six Rivers National Forest among the Siskiyou Mountains. The Court admitted that “it is undisputed that the Indian respondents’ beliefs are sincere and that the Government’s proposed actions will have severe adverse effects on the practice of their religion.” Nevertheless, because the disputed area was on public land, the Court thought that the government should be allowed to manage its property in any way it saw fit, regardless of the severe adverse effects on the religious practice of the three Indigenous nations. A lot has been written about this case, Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, but here I would like to focus on the Court’s reasoning, that this is government property and therefore cannot be protected as Indigenous sacred land with accordance with the religion clauses of the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the majority, declares that “whatever rights the Indians may have to the use of the area—those rights do not divest the Government of its right to use what is, after all, its land.
Dana Lloyd
S04E03: Reclaiming Sacred Ground: Indigenous Sovereignty, Environmental Wisdom, and the Path to Restorative Justice with Patrick Gonzalez-Rogers
Our hosts Philip P. Arnold and Sandy Bigtree speak with Patrick Gonzalez-Rogers - In this episode of the Mapping The Doctrine Of Discovery Podcast, hosts Phil Arnold and Sandy Bigtree interview Patrick Gonzalez-Rogers, a faculty member at the Yale School of Environment.
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
S04E04: Reckoning with the Legacy of Colonization: A Dialogue on Native American Erasure and Resilience
Our hosts Philip P. Arnold and Sandy Bigtree speak with Tink Tinker - In this podcast episode, Phil Arnold and Sandy Bigtree interview Tink Tinker, Professor Emeritus at Iliff School of Theology. American Indian Liberation: A Theology of Sovereignty (2008); Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation(2004); and Missionary Conquest: The Gospel and Native American Genocide (1993).
