Manifest Destiny, as a term for westward expansion, was not used until the 1840s. Its predecessor was the Doctrine of Discovery, a legal tradition by which Europeans and Americans laid legal claim to the land of the indigenous people that they discovered. In the United States, the British colonists who had recently become Americans were competing with the English, French, and Spanish for control of lands west of the Mississippi. Who would be the discoverers of the Indians and their lands, the United States or the European countries? We know the answer, of course, but in this book, Miller explains for the first time exactly how the United States achieved victory, not only on the ground, but also in the developing legal thought of the day. The American effort began with Thomas Jefferson's authorization of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, which set out in 1803 to lay claim to the West. Lewis and Clark had several charges, among them the discovery of a Northwest Passage—a land route across the continent—in order to establish an American fur trade with China. In addition, the Corps of Northwestern Discovery, as the expedition was called, cataloged new plant and animal life, and performed detailed ethnographic research on the Indians they encountered. This fascinating book lays out how that ethnographic research became the legal basis for Indian removal practices implemented decades later, explaining how the Doctrine of Discovery became part of American law, as it still is today.

This book presents new material and shines fresh light on the under-explored historical and legal evidence about the use of the doctrine of discovery in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. North America, New Zealand and Australia were colonised by England under an international legal principle that is known today as the doctrine of discovery. When Europeans set out to explore and exploit new lands in the fifteenth through to 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 Ngai Te Rangi), an Indigenous Australian, 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.

In 1823, Chief Justice John Marshall handed down a Supreme Court decision of monumental importance in defining the rights of indigenous peoples throughout the English-speaking world. At the heart of the decision for Johnson v. M'Intosh was a "discovery doctrine" that gave rights of ownership to the European sovereigns who "discovered" the land and converted the indigenous owners into tenants. Though its meaning and intention has been fiercely disputed, more than 175 years later, this doctrine remains the law of the land. In 1991, while investigating the discovery doctrine's historical origins Lindsay Robertson made a startling find; in the basement of a Pennsylvania furniture-maker, he discovered a trunk with the complete corporate records of the Illinois and Wabash Land Companies, the plaintiffs in Johnson v. M'Intosh. Conquest by Law provides, for the first time, the complete and troubling account of the European "discovery" of the Americas. This is a gripping tale of political collusion, detailing how a spurious claim gave rise to a doctrine--intended to be of limited application--which itself gave rise to a massive displacement of persons and the creation of a law that governs indigenous people and their lands to this day.

Native American peoples suffer from health, educational, infrastructure, and social deficiencies of the sort that most Americans who live outside tribal lands are wholly unaware of and would not tolerate. Indians are the poorest people in the United States, and their reservations are appallingly poverty-stricken; not surprisingly, they suffer from the numerous social pathologies that invariably accompany such economic conditions. Historically, most tribal communities were prosperous, composed of healthy, vibrant societies sustained over hundreds and in some instances perhaps even thousands of years. By creating sustainable economic development on reservations, however, gradual long-term change can be effected, thereby improving the standard of living and sustaining tribal cultures. Reservation “Capitalism” relates the true history, describes present-day circumstances, and sketches the potential future of Indian communities and economics. It provides key background information on indigenous economic systems and property-rights regimes in what is now the United States and explains how the vast majority of Native lands and natural resource assets were lost. Robert J. Miller focuses on strategies for establishing public and private economic activities on reservations and for creating economies in which reservation inhabitants can be employed, live, and have access to the necessities of life, circumstances ultimately promoting complete tribal self-sufficiency.

"An analysis of how religious bias shaped U.S. federal Indian law."--

Traces the European presence in the New World, focusing on the Spanish, French, and English and their relations with the Native Americans.