The Supreme Court’s discovery doctrine made land seizure legally viable.

Evidence

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the US government repeatedly violated treaties that it had negotiated with Tribal Nations, resulting not only in the seizure of land but also in the loss of valuable rights included in landownership, such as the ability to sell timber and grazing rights. Such treaties, which were often negotiated against a backdrop of threats of starvation, resulted in “agreements” with unconscionable terms because tribes were left with little option but to agree or face certain death. As if the scales weren’t already tipped in the government’s favor, in Johnson v. McIntosh in 1823 the Supreme Court established a legal doctrine that stripped Tribal Nations of many of the landownership rights enjoyed by non-Indian landowners. The Court codified the notion of “discovery,” which enabled the United States to claim that it was the only entity that had a right to buy Native Tribal land. The law did not recognize the right of Tribal Nations to own property—only their right to occupy the land. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 147

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the ‘discovery’ doctrine and its legal effect of denying Tribal property ownership.
• XREF: The ‘occupy but not own’ distinction maps onto how Other People’s Property or settler-colonial land law treats Native land tenure.