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.
Indigenous Consent: A Right Rooted in the Doctrine of Discovery
Indians being the prior occupants, possess the right to the soil. It cannot be taken from them unless by their free consent…. To dispossess them in any other principle, would be a gross violation of the fundamental laws of nature” (Henry Knox, Secretary of War, 1789).
Urszula Piasta Mansfield
S04E02: Exploring the American Religious Tapestry: From Civil Religion to Secularism and the Impact of the January 6th Insurrection
Our hosts Philip P. Arnold and Sandy Bigtree speak with Joel Harrison - In this podcast episode, hosts Phil Arnold and Sandy Bigtree interview Joel Harrison, an associate professor of religion at Northern Virginia Community College, and two of his students.
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.
