Doctrine Of Discovery Essay

The Doctrine of Discovery is a document that allows Christians the right to claim the lands they had “discovered” for their Christians Monarchs. So, any land that was not inhabited by Christians was available to be claimed, which is still in play in present times. When I learned about the Doctrine of Discovery, I was kind of shocked. Why? Because, I do not remember learning about this at all when I was high school. And if it was brought up, it was only briefly. Which again shocked me, because it is such a huge cause of many issues. So when Professor Lerat talked about this, it was like everything clicked in my head, and I could suddenly see a chain-reaction of events going on in my mind. This Doctrine of Discovery was the starting point, the

It’s funny how people can just gloss over the Doctrine, pretending that its not even there. Because, of this Doctrine so many Indigenous Peoples are still suffering today. They (whites) cannot seem to understand why the Indigenous Peoples are still upset about this Doctrine, cannot understand why they cannot let it go. Telling them to just “get over it” or “put it in the past”. They do not seem to get that it that it is like going up to a Jewish person and trying to justify why the Holocaust and saying. “Hey, it wasn’t that bad guys.” People still have a hard trying to get past that, and at least the world acknowledged the Holocaust as genocide, the indigenous people do no even get that. Its like everyone is pretending that the Europeans did not come over to Americas and slaughtered or wiped out whole populations and tribes. I also could not believe that the doctrine was used as a tool to justify presenting upon States the ‘exclusive power to extinguish’ indigenous rights. Even in different parts of the world the courts have aided the States not only by validating such horrid and destructive acts, but also extinguishing indigenous rights through judicial