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S02E01 – The Backstory of Johnson v. M’Intosh  with Lindsay Robertson

S02E01 – The Backstory of Johnson v. M’Intosh with Lindsay Robertson

FromMapping the Doctrine of Discovery


S02E01 – The Backstory of Johnson v. M’Intosh with Lindsay Robertson

FromMapping the Doctrine of Discovery

ratings:
Length:
50 minutes
Released:
Jun 26, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode

Description

We begin this episode with a land acknowledgement. Our hosts Prof. Philip P. Arnold and Sandy Bigtree (Mohawk Nation), begin by introducing our guest Lindsay Robertson. He is the Chickasaw Nation Endowed Chair in Native American Law, Faculty Director, the Center for the Study of American Indian Law and Policy, and the Sam K. Viersen Family Foundation Presidential Professor. He is the author of the 2005 book Conquest by Law: How the Discovery of the Americas Dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of Their Lands. The episode begins with Prof. Robertson providing the context for Johnson v. M’Intosh, Chief Justice John Marshall and the Marshall trilogy, which is Johnson v M'Intosh, 21 US (8 Wheat) 543 (1823), Cherokee Nation v Georgia, 30 US (5 Pet) 1 (1831) and Worcester v Georgia, 31 US (6 Pet) 515 (1832). Early in Prof. Robertson’s career, he was looking to do a history, and he knew these three cases so he began looking into them and began wondering what was the history and story behind the cases. As he dug into the archives, he realized that there were significant gaps in the archive. An Archives at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania helped him get into touch with Jasper Brinton, whose ancestor had been secretary of the land companies at the center of the case. It turns out that the family had preserved the documents and had an incredible archive of the materials necessary to write a history of the Johnson decision. The United Illinois and Wabash Land Companies Collection is available online and thanks to Brinton, Robertson, and the librarians at the University of Oklahoma this open-access resource is available for free online. We encourage you to please avail yourself of it as you listen to the episode.  Support the showView the transcript and show notes at podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org. Learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery on our site DoctrineofDiscovery.org.
Released:
Jun 26, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode

Titles in the series (24)

We launch this Podcast with Columbus’ arrival to the “New World.” This event issued forth the “Age of Discovery.” Although we were taught Columbus was in search of spices, he was actually sailing under 15th century Papal edicts known as the Doctrines of Christian Discovery [DOCD]. Following the fall of Constantinople, these Papal Bulls were issued to legitimate Portugal’s exploits in extracting gold in West Africa and capturing slaves. By 1492, the Transatlantic slave trade began with Columbus’ first crossing. The DOCD established the spiritual justification to bring the world under total dominion of the Church. The patriarchal hierarchy was constituted under an Almighty Supreme God at the helm—thus giving the Church full access to the world’s resources, by having dominion over Indigenous Peoples, their lands, and destruction of their cultures. These Christian decrees soon became the legal principal used during the Protestant Reformation, by giving credence to any Protestant claim to Indigenous lands in the Americas. By 1823, the DOCD was codified into US property law by the Supreme Court in Johnson v M’Intosh. As recently as 2005, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg upheld the DOCD in her written majority opinion against the Oneida in; City of Sherrill v Oneida Nation. Following 15th century Christian imperialism, through to the 19th century formulation of US law, we are able to identify today, how the DOCD continues to be utilized all over the world by multi-national corporations. Corporations who continue to justify resource extraction through the seizure and destruction of Indigenous lands, and who perpetrate cultural genocide through the 15th century fiction of “terra nullius”—empty land, and under the guise of economic development. The goal of this Podcast is to help identify these systems of domination that have been sustained by greed and power, through the subjugation of human beings and the natural world. https://podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org/