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.
Comments on the Bishop's Panel: Transcription of Conference Presentation
Greetings to you all. I'm Haiwhagai'i, Onondaga Nation, Eel Clan. I have to start off with gratitude for seeing all of your faces here. It is a bit awkward for me to be sitting here on a panel with 3 bishops. It's true there is plenty of sin like was mentioned and more of it has come to the surface. We hear about the promises today and we heard about the confessions. We have to stick with the truth, and the truth of the matter is there is no trust.
Jake Haiwhagai'i Edwards
The Challenges of Revoking the Papal Bulls: A View-from-the-Shore Analysis of Recent Statements by Christian Churches
Let us set the context for this discussion. The context begins with the free existence of our Native nations and peoples, extending back to the beginning of our time through our oral histories and traditions, contrasted with the system of domination that was carried by ship across the ocean and imposed on everyone and everything. From that starting point we end up with a non-Christian view-from-the-shore with our Ancestors looking out at the invading ships sailing from Western Christendom, and a view-from-the-ship perspective, with the colonizers moving toward our Ancestors with the intention of establishing the Christian empire's system of domination where it did not yet exist
Steven T. Newcomb
The Construction of Indigenous Americans and Spanish Conquistadors in Theodore de Bry's Engravings
The primary visual sources depicting the treatment of Indigenous peoples by conquerors, particularly the works of Protestant engraver Theodore de Bry, offer valuable insights into the interactions between European explorers and Indigenous Americans. De Bry's illustrations, influenced by Bartolomé de Las Casas's accounts of Spanish atrocities, serve as a condemnation of Spanish Catholic colonization in the Americas. Through his engravings, de Bry politicizes and weaponizes Indigenous bodies, portraying them as deserving of conquest and civilizing, albeit by Protestant conquerors. His depictions of Indigenous peoples, based on biased accounts relayed from explorers, perpetuate stereotypes used to justify colonization. De Bry's Protestant vision, evident in his works, advocates for Protestant colonization as a preferable alternative to Spanish Catholic conquest. Despite condemning Spanish abuses, de Bry's ultimate goal is not to end colonialism but to promote Protestant colonization in the Americas.
Isabel V. Maine-Torres
An Unholy Wedding: Christianity, Civilizational Supremacy, and the In/visibility of "Race" in Post-colonial Philippines
An often-heard truism among homeland Filipinos in conversations with their diasporic counterparts in the United States is the notion that race and racism are irrelevant categories when it comes to the Philippines. 'Don't export your racism to us,' is the usual protest. 'There's no racism in the Philippines.We all descend from the islands' original peoples.' Wary—and rightfully so—of the often-decontextualized exportation of debates and discourses to the home country (as has been the case historically in a kind of center-periphery trajectory), one interlocutor quips: 'You cannot employ the white settler colonizer vs. Indigenous in North America to the paradigm of the Philippines. … People from the Philippines, yes, including many from different Indigenous groups … do not consider themselves so removed from [other] Filipinos who are not part of their heritage.'
S. Lily Mendoza
