I am sharing my article, “My Decades-long Inquiry Into the Doctrine of Christian Discovery and Domination,” published in The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, volume 25, issue 1.
The article looks back over many years of research into the Doctrine of Christian Discovery and Domination. I discuss how my inquiry developed, why the language of domination matters, and how religious and legal ideas were used to justify claims of authority over Native nations and our lands.
The article also traces the relationship between the 1493 papal bull Inter Caetera, Johnson v. M’Intosh in 1823, and the vocabulary that still shapes federal Indian law. Words such as “dominion,” “conquest,” “civilization,” “ascendancy,” and “sovereignty” are not neutral. They carry a worldview. They help create the appearance that domination is lawful, natural, or inevitable.
I also connect this research to family history, Native language loss, boarding schools, and the continuing need to recover cultural, spiritual, and intellectual traditions rooted in life rather than domination.
For readers following my work, this article is a concentrated statement of the inquiry that runs through my writing, speaking, and podcast conversations: how to identify the colonial mindset embedded in law and language, and how to move toward the original free existence of Native nations and peoples.