The spiritual, legal and moral justification for the Colonisation of North America originates in The Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1493, which were decrees or announcements of a law under the official authority of the Roman Catholic Pope. These decrees supported the genocide and enslavement of non-Christians by granting rights to Christina, i.e. European sovereigns. The Papal Bull of 1455 specifically granted Christian sovereigns the right to:

“invade, search out, capture, vanquish “non-Christians” and “their land and resources” and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery”

This, along with the 1493 Papal Bull that granted European kings and queens sovereignty over any lands discovered that were not already under the sovereignty of Christians, form the “Doctrine of Discovery”. The Doctrine of Discovery was first articulated in US law in 1823 in Johnson v. M’Intosh. It has been used as recently as 2014, to deny Indigenous sovereignty over land in Canada and the United States.

Despite the British Proclamation of 1763, which was intended to end the war between settlers and Indigenous peoples by creating a western boundary to settler expansion, and the subsequent treaties negotiated under this Proclamation, settlers continued to expand all the way to the Pacific ocean, breaking treaties and displacing millions of Indigenous peoples from their territories illegally. The inherently racist justification for these atrocities are rarely acknowledged. The fact that they continue to influence legal decisions is alarming.

Tip: Think about an area of law that you benefit from such property rights, criminal law or corporate law. Knowing that these laws have the Doctrine of Discovery as their foundation, how do you feel about benefiting from them? Imagine how you might contribute to real reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples knowing this? Look into the Land Back Movement and find a way to support it.