Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, 485 U.S. 439

“Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, 485 U.S. 439,” an Outcome archive entry by Dana Lloyd. The entry belongs to the featured collection and connects readers to scholarship, public history, and organizing around the Doctrine of Discovery, Christian domination, Indigenous sovereignty, law, religion, land, memory, and accountability.

In brief, it addresses 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. For readers arriving from the main Doctrine of Discovery site, this post functions as a pointer rather than a replacement for the full Outcome record. The canonical page preserves the complete context, metadata, author information, citation links, media, and neighboring materials in the archive.

The source text highlights terms and contexts including This statement brings to mind Chief Justice John Marshall’s creation, in Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), of “occupancy rights” for Indigenous peoples whose lands were “discovered” by sovereign European nations, who were entitled to acquire those lands, by purchase or conquest, but had to allow Indigenous peoples to use the lands as long as they inhabited them. O’Connor, like Marshall, does not take away the nations’ rights to use the land; both subject this right to that of a(nother) sovereign nation (in both cases it is the United States), thus relativizing the sovereignty of Indigenous nations in the name of discovery. The High Country is a. Read the canonical Outcome page for the complete entry.

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