the twentieth centuries, they justified their sovereign and property claims over these territories and the Indigenous peoples with the discovery doctrine. This legal principle was justified by
religious and ethnocentric ideas of European and Christian superiority over the other cultures, religions, and races of the world. The doctrine provided that newly-arrived Europeans automatically acquired property rights in the lands of Indigenous peoples and gained political and commercial rights over the inhabitants. The English colonial governments and colonists in North America, New Zealand, and Australia all utilised this doctrine, and still use it today to assert legal rights to
Indigenous lands and to assert control over Indigenous peoples. Written by Indigenous legal academics - an American Indian from the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, a New Zealand Maori (Ngati
Rawkawa and Ngati Ranginui), an Aboriginal Australian (Eualayai/Gammilaroi), and a Cree (Neheyiwak) in the country now known as Canada - Discovering Indigenous Lands provides a unique insight into the insidious historical and contemporary application of the doctrine of discovery.
Share This Book: