Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies

Discovering Indigenous Lands, The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies, by Robert J. Miller, Jacinta Ruru, Larissa Behrendt and Tracey Lindberg, published by Oxford University Press in 2010, is a scholarly comparative legal history of the Doctrine of Discovery across four English common law jurisdictions, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, written by four Indigenous legal scholars. Its authority rests on standard academic peer review at a major university press and the authors' combined expertise in Indigenous law across these jurisdictions. Its strength is tracing the doctrine's specific legal mechanics, from the papal bulls Romanus Pontifex and Inter Caetera and the Treaty of Tordesillas through its adoption into US common law in Johnson versus M'Intosh and its persistence in later case law. Its limit is scope: it addresses the doctrine's role in land title specifically and does not cover the later, distinct 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which falls outside this book's own subject.