Steven T. Newcomb Publishes JCRT Article on Christian Discovery and Domination
Indigenous Law Institute announces Steven T. Newcomb’s JCRT article on his decades-long inquiry into the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, domination, Native nations, and colonial law.
Published on: | Published by: Steven T. Newcomb | Tags: steven-newcomb jcrt doctrine-of-discovery domination federal-indian-law
The Indigenous Law Institute is pleased to share Steven T. Newcomb’s article, “My Decades-long Inquiry Into the Doctrine of Christian Discovery and Domination,” published by The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory in volume 25, issue 1, as Article No. 05.
In the article, Newcomb reflects on the long arc of his research into the Doctrine of Christian Discovery and Domination. He traces how religious documents, colonial legal categories, and U.S. federal Indian law helped construct a claim of authority over Native nations and their lands. The article also connects that research to family history, Native language loss, boarding schools, and the need to recover Indigenous cultural, spiritual, and political knowledge.
For ILI readers, this publication is especially important because it gathers many of the Institute’s core concerns in one scholarly setting: the 1493 papal bull Inter Caetera, the 1823 U.S. Supreme Court decision Johnson v. M’Intosh, the weaponization of words such as “dominion,” “conquest,” “civilization,” “ascendancy,” and “sovereignty,” and the contrast between imposed colonial law and the original free existence of Indigenous peoples.
The article is a useful point of entry for students, researchers, advocates, and community members who want a concise account of why the language of domination remains central to understanding federal Indian law and the U.S. property system.