Reappraising the Doctrine of Discovery

“Reappraising the Doctrine of Discovery,” an Outcome archive entry by David E. Wilkins, Ph.D. 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 Again, were we to inquire by what law or authority you set up a claim [to our land], I answer, none! Your laws extend not into our country,. 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 The European doctrine of discovery principle, recognized as recently as 1986 by a federal district court as “a legal fiction,” nevertheless remains one of the most entrenched and baffling legal doctrines undergirding federal Indian policy and law. It’s continuing legal and perceptual force perpetuates a second class national status for Native nations and relegates individual Natives to a second class citizenship status with regards to their incomplete property rights. This doctrine holds, under its most widely understood and debilitating definition, that European explorers’ ‘discovery’ of land in what became known as the Americas gave the discovering European nation–and the United States as successor–absolute legal title and ownership of. Read the canonical Outcome page for the complete entry.

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