In Red Man’s Land—White Man’s Law (1971), Wilcomb Washburn says he “hopes to describe” what he calls “the process by which the Indian moved from sovereign to ward to citizen.” (emphasis added) It would have been more accurate for him to have said it was the Christian Europeans thoughts and ideas that had “moved” “the
READ MOREIn his book Elements of International Law, first published in 1836, Henry Wheaton pointed out that “the general consent of mankind has established the principle, that long and uninterrupted possession [of land] by one nation excludes the claim of every other.” During the so-called Age of Discovery, the category “mankind” was restricted to Christian Europeans,
READ MOREYears ago I was visiting the John Carter Brown Library at the Brown University campus. That is where Henry Wheaton went to college. He was the Reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court during the Johnson v. McIntosh ruling of 1823. I went there to do some research about the so-called Age of Discovery, the history
READ MOREPrior to Columbus’s invasive arrival to our part of Mother Earth, our nations of Great Turtle Island (“North America”) were living in a physical location that was entirely free and independent of the Western Christendom’s system of domination. At that time, our nations were still free and independent of all the ideas and mental activities
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