Conquest By Law

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.

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Exploring the history of contemporary legal thought on the rights and status of the West's colonized indigenous tribal peoples, Williams here traces the development of the themes that justified and impelled Spanish, English, and American conquests of the New World.

This is an enquiry into the place of the right of conquest in international relations since the early sixteenth century, and the causes and consequences of its demise in the twentieth century. It was a recognized principle of international law until the early years of this century that a state that emerges victorious in a war is entitled to claim sovereignty over territory which it has taken possession. Sharon Korman shows how the First World War - which led to the rise of self-determination and to calls for the prohibition of way - prompted the reconstruction of international law and the consequent abolition of the title by conquest. Her conclusion, which highlights the merits and defects of the modern law as a vehicle for discouraging war by denying the title to the conqueror, challenges many of the assumptions that have come to constitute part of the conventional wisdom of our times. This is a study, not of international law narrowly conceived, but of the place of a changing legal principle in international history and the contemporary world.

In Conquest and the Law in Swedish Livonia (ca. 1630-1710), Heikki Pihlajamäki offers an exciting account of the law in seventeenth-century Livonia, conquered by Sweden. The volume demonstrates how the differences in legal cultures affected the Livonian judiciary and legal procedure in the region.

As the settler state of Canada expanded into Indigenous lands, two traditions clashed in a bruising series of asymmetrical encounters over land use and ownership. One site of conflict was Kahnawà:ke. The Laws and the Land delineates the establishment of a settler colonial relationship from early contact ways of sharing land; land practices under Kahnawà:ke law; and ultimately the Canadian invasion in the guise of the Indian Act, private property, and coercive pressure to assimilate. This meticulously researched book is connected to larger issues of human relations with environments, communal and individual ways of relating to land, legal pluralism, historical racism and inequality, and Indigenous resurgence.

This document, originally written in 1978, is a comprehensive report on the traditional forms of justice among Aboriginal peoples across Canada and the impact that western settlement had on those systems. It begins with a chapter on traditional justice among the Micmac and Naskapi. Part 2 covers the struggle for power as Europeans invaded traditional Aboriginal lands, and includes descriptions of civilizations & traditional justice of the First Nations of the central regions (Ojibwe, Iroquois, Huron). Part 3 covers traditional & European justice in the British colonial period, 1763-1867. Part 4 reviews the effect of Canadian legislation on Native peoples after Confederation, especially in the western provinces, and the numerous rebellions & protest actions against injustice. The final part covers the period from the granting of the unconditional franchise to Aboriginal peoples and the various movements for Aboriginal rights and a reformed justice system.

Responding to anti-Indianism in America, the wide-ranging perspectives culled in Unlearning the Language of Conquest present a provocative account of the contemporary hegemony still at work today, whether conscious or unconscious. Four Arrows has gathered a rich collection of voices and topics, including: Waziyatawin Angela Cavender Wilson's "Burning Down the House: Laura Ingalls Wilder and American Colonialism," which probes the mentality of hatred woven within the pages of this iconographic children's literature. Vine Deloria's "Conquest Masquerading as Law," examining the effect of anti-Indian prejudice on decisions in U.S. federal law. David N. Gibb's "The Question of Whitewashing in American History and Social Science," featuring a candid discussion of the spurious relationship between sources of academic funding and the types of research allowed or discouraged. Barbara Alice Mann's "Where Are Your Women? Missing in Action," displaying the exclusion of Native American women in curricula that purport to illuminate the history of Indigenous Peoples. Bringing to light crucial information and perspectives on an aspect of humanity that pervades not only U.S. history but also current sustainability, sociology, and the ability to craft accurate understandings of the population as a whole, Unlearning the Language of Conquest yields a liberating new lexis for realistic dialogues.