Anish Farming Curriculum_Module 3

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Unit Three:TOPICSModule 3: The Political Exclusion of Indigenous Knowledge Systems

On The Politics of Discovery, Terra Nullius and Native Cultural Landscaping

Three significant terms framed much of American thinking of empire in relationship to Native peoples: the

doctrine of discovery, terra nullius, and manifest destiny. All of these were predicated on a non-existence of

Indigenous nations, and, by association, Native agriculture. As Gartner would say,

In 1095, at the beginning of the Crusades, Pope Urban II issued an edict -- the Papal Bull

Terra Nullius (meaning empty land). It gave the kings and princes of Europe the right to

discover, or claim land in non-Christian areas. This policy was extended in 1452 when Pope

Nicholas V issued the bull Romanus Pontifex, declaring war against all non-Christians

throughout the world and authorizing the conquest of their nations and territories.i

These edicts treated non-Christians as uncivilized and subhuman, and therefore without rights to any land onation. Christian leaders claimed a God-given right to take control of all lands and used this idea to justify

war, colonization, and even slavery.

By the time Christopher Columbus set sail in 1492, this Doctrine of Discoverywas a well-established idea in

the Christian world. When he reached the Americas, Columbus performed a ceremony to "take possession"

of all lands "discovered," meaning all territory not occupied by Christians. Upon his return to Europe in 1493

Pope Alexander VI issued the bull Inter Cetera, granting Spain the right to conquer the lands that Columbus

had already "discovered" and all lands that it might come upon in the future. This decree also expressed the

Pope's wish to convert the natives of these lands to Catholicism in order to strengthen the "Christian

Empire."ii

In 1573 Pope Paul II issued the papal bill Sublimis Deus, which denounced the idea that Native Americans

"should be treated like irrational animals and used exclusively for our profit and our service,"iii

and Pope

Urban VIII (1623-1644) formally excommunicated anyone still holding Indian slaves. By this time, however,

the Doctrine of Discoverywas deeply rooted and led nonetheless to the conquest of non-Christian lands and

people in every corner of the world. Although the U.S. was founded on freedom from such tyranny, the idea

that white people and Christians had certain divine rights was nevertheless ingrained in the young nation's

policies. The slave trade, for example, and centuries of violence against black people depended upon the ide

that non-Whites were less than human. The theft of Native American lands required a similar justification.

In 1823, the Doctrine of Discoverywas written into U.S. law as a way to deny land rights to Native Americans

in the Supreme Court case,Johnson v. McIntosh. It is ironic that the case did not directly involve any Native

Americans since the decision stripped them of all rights to their independence. In 1775, Thomas Johnson and

a group of British investors bought a tract of land from the Plankeshaw Indians. During the Revolutionary

War, this land was taken from the British and became part of the U.S. in the "County of Illinois." In 1818, the

U.S. government sold part of the land to William McIntosh, a citizen of Illinois. This prompted Joshua

Johnson, the heir to one of the original buyers, to claim the land through a lawsuit (which he later lost)iv.

In a unanimous decision, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that the Christian European nations had assumed

complete control over the lands of America during the "Age of Discovery." Upon winning independence in


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1776, he noted, the U.S. inherited authority over these lands from Great Britain, "notwithstanding the

occupancy of the natives, who were heathens"v

According to the ruling, American Indians did not have any

rights as independent nations, but only as tenants or residents of U.S. land. For Joshua Johnson, this meant

that the original sale of land by the Piankeshaws was invalid because they were not the lawful owners. For

Native Americans, this decision foreshadowed the Trail of Tears, and a hundred years of forced removal and

violence. Despite recent efforts to have the case repealed as a symbol of good will,Johnson v. McIntosh has

never been overruled and remains good law.

In 1845, a democratic leader and prominent editor named John L. O'Sullivan gave the Doctrine of Discoverya

uniquely American flavor when he coined the term Manifest Destinyto defend U.S. expansion and claims to

new territory: ".... the right of our manifest destiny to over spread and to possess the whole of the continent

which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty is right such as that of

the tree to the space of air and the earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of

growth."vi

''Terra nullius'' is a Latin expression deriving from Roman law meaning "land belonging to no one" (or "no

man's land), which is used in public international law to describe territory which has never been subject to

the sovereignty of any state, or over which any prior sovereign has expressly or implicitly relinquishedsovereignty.vii Sovereignty over territory which is ''terra nullius'' may be acquired through occupation. This

notion, grounded in previous notions that the lands held by nonChristian peoples were subject to claiming

by Christian nation states, had some essential elements of denial. These would include, the idea that the

Indigenous peoples who lived in these lands were agents ofchange on these lands, not a vast wilderness,

and that Indigenous nations had significant moral authority, infrastructure and a way of life which would

mean, that theft of lands would be viewed as immoral.

Added to this political philosophy was experiential knowledge. This is to say, that most immigrants, and

colonizers came from a pastoral economy, and a set of hedges, fences and boundaries imposed by monarchy

and empire. They had no experience with an Indigenous worldview, nor an Indigenous way of relating to th

land. Hugh Brody discusses this widely in his book, The Peoples Land: Eskimos and Whites in the EasterArctic

viii. And a more simplistic analysis and summary is contained in Jack Weatherfords Native Roots,

where he notes, The Pilgrims of Plymouth survived the winter of l620-21 in American thanks to the

generous help of the Wampanoag, Massachuset, and the neighboring Indians who supplied most of the food

for the first Thanksgiving feast as well as for the subsequent ones.ix One Wampanoag, who has become

known to us as Squanto, taught the English so effectively because he spoke fluent English and had already

traveled to several European countries after escaping from an English slaver. The Pilgrims arrived not

knowing how to speak any of the Indian languages or how to grow European crops, much less American one

Because the Pilgrims emigrated to America from cities and towns in Europe and not from the countryside,

they knew nothing of living in the forest or of farming. Squanto and the other Indians patiently taught them

to plant and cultivate Indian corn, pumpkins, beans and squash.x

After helping the Pilgrims start their farms,

Squanto died in l622, as did thousands of his fellow Indians who fell victim to the many fevers and epidemic

diseases introduced by the Europeans. When the Indians died form disease or warfare, the pilgrims took ove

their neatly prepared fields and storehouses. Even the settlement that we know as Plymouth began as the

Wampanoag village of Patuxet before the Pilgrims appropriated it for themselves taking over Wampanoag

houses, cleaned field, corn bins and even toolsxi

(112). All of this was, frankly, conveniently forgotten in the

making of Empire.

Terra Nullis and the Exclusion of Indigenous Knowledges


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Let us say that the notion of terra nullius largely framed much of the early reporting on Indigenous

agriculture. While the significance of Indigenous food stocks to world cuisine and food wealth is well

documented, the counter-intuitive suggestion that the land was unused by Native Americans had strong

resonance in the practice of colonialism and empire building. In 1956 Henry Wallace, former US Secretary of

Agriculture and also Vice President during Franklin Delano Roosevelts administration, estimated that Native

peoples cultivated 50,000 acres across all of Americaxii. In contrast, the Gardners dissertation documents

field mosaics belonging to individual tribes or confederacies that were as large as Wallaces estimate for all o

North America, Indeed DeLerys l730 map of the principle village of the Renards is taken at face value, the

Sac and Fox had a single field that covered 43.5 square kilometers of ground.xiii Gartner also cited a quote b

Cronon from 1983:

The comparatively late founding of Wisconsin meant that the discourses of settlement were

also different than most other areas east of the Mississippi River. Nineteenth century settlers

in Wisconsin could acquired legal land title directly from the US government instead of

claiming supposedly unimproved lands has been the practice elsewhere during much of the

Colonial period. There are some political and economic incentives for depreciating native

landscapes were no longer operational during the Euro-America settlement of Wisconsin.xiv

Henry Wallaces assumptions were not only based on faulty data, but they served an imperial and colonial

mindset, which justified the appropriation of lands. Wallaces estimate of 50,000 acres is an interesting

assertion, particularly when an estimated one-third of major food crops in the world originated in the

Americas, with corn at the center of this food wealth. So it is, that those who write history have diminished

the significance of Indigenous knowledge systems in relationship to agriculture.

According the 1866 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the Menominee "raised bua small crop this year, but made about 75,000 pounds of maple sugar, for which a ready sale was

found."xv As a side note, the Oneida that year produced 33,000 bushels of grain (not sure corn,

wheat, or what), 13,500 bushels of potatoes, and owned over 1,500 head of horses and other stock

According to Ebeanzer Childs, an early Green Bay settler, the French families whom had all taken onmuch of the native customs, had the following food/subsistence customs:

"Their principal food was wild game, fish and hulled corn. They caught large quantities of

sturgeon and trout, and they made immense quantities of maple sugar. At the proper season

in the spring, the entire settlement would remove to their sugar-camps, often remain two

months, each family making eight or ten hundred pounds of the finest sugar I ever saw.xvi
http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/whc&CISOPTR=759&CISOSHOW=393http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/whc&CISOPTR=759&CISOSHOW=393


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Discussion Questions:How does the marginalization of Indigenous knowledge serve colonialism?

ReadingsSession 2: The Political Exclusion of Indigenous Knowledge SystemsModule Topics Readings

1

Introduction

Omaa

AkiingIn

From the text:

Jack Weatherford Native Roots, How the Indians Enriched America. NewYork, NY: Ballantine Books, l99l.

Leo G. Waisberg & Tim E. Holzkamm, DRAFT (WORK IN PROGRESS) - WITHOUT PREJUDICE, American Society for Ethnohistory - 13

November 1998 Special Session - Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Reserva on, Ojibwe (Anishinaabeg) Natural Resource Use in the Face

of Government Regula on: Historical and Cultural Perspec ves Peaceful Pursuit of the Indian Happiness: Anishinaabeg

Resources in the Boundary Waters A er Treaty #3, Treaty & Aboriginal Rights Research, Grand Council Treaty #3, Kenora, Ontario


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the

Beginningand

Spiritual

Foundations

Charles Mann l49l

Also see:

United Nations The Doctrine of Discovery and Colonialism The Doctrine

of Discovery, The International Law of ColonialismConference Room

Paper11th

Session of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues7-18May 2012 Professor Robert Miller

Brody, Hugh. The Peoples Land: Eskimos and Whites in the Easter

Arctic. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1977.

Newcomb, Steven. Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine o

Christian Discovery. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2008.

Gartner, Gustav William. Raised Field Landscapes of Native North

America Thesis (Ph. D.). Madison: The University of Wisconsin, 2003.O'Sullivan, John L. (JulyAugust 1845)."Annexation".United StatesMagazine and Democratic Review17 (1): 510. Retrieved 2008-05-20.

United States. Office of Indian AffairsAnnual report of the commissioner

of Indian affairs, for the year 1866G.P.O., [1866] v. : fold. maps ; 23 cm.

Childs, Colonel Ebenezer. "Recollections of Wisconsin Since 1820." 1859MS. State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. 508 p. ;

23 cm.

Research Articles:

AssignmentsTOPICSModule 3: Ricing and Harvest

Mid-SeptemberSeptemberish: Wabaabagaa Giizis Changing Leaves Moon (Wa-bah-ba-gah)Variants: Waatebagaa-giizis, Mandaamini-giizis, Moozo-giizis

Translations: Leaves Changing Color Moon, Corn Moon, Moose Moon

DAY 1:

1Anishinaabe knowledge and the powers of agricultureEquityintergenerational, interspecies, etc.

2 Nutrition and Native Agriculture (including seasonal eating)

3 Opening traditional dinner

4 Journaling

DAY 2: Ricing Day
http://unpfip.blogspot.com/2011/07/robert-j-miller-doctrine-of-discovery.htmlhttp://unpfip.blogspot.com/2011/07/robert-j-miller-doctrine-of-discovery.htmlhttp://web.grinnell.edu/courses/HIS/f01/HIS202-01/Documents/OSullivan.htmlhttp://web.grinnell.edu/courses/HIS/f01/HIS202-01/Documents/OSullivan.htmlhttp://web.grinnell.edu/courses/HIS/f01/HIS202-01/Documents/OSullivan.htmlhttp://web.grinnell.edu/courses/HIS/f01/HIS202-01/Documents/OSullivan.htmlhttp://unpfip.blogspot.com/2011/07/robert-j-miller-doctrine-of-discovery.html


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5 Anishinaabeg Economics

6 Wild rice and the Anishinaabeg people

7 Ricing

8 Preparing a traditional Anishinaabeg fall meal

9 Journaling

DAY 3:10 Harvesting and preserving foodstraditional preservation and storage methods

11 Re-envisioning tribal food economics

12 Economic Paradigms of Sustainability

13 Restoration and Remediation

14 Journaling

i Gartner, Gustav William. Raised Field Landscapes of Native North America Thesis (Ph. D.). Madison:

The University of Wisconsin, 2003.

ii Newcomb, Steven. Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 2008.iii Gartner, Gustav William. Raised Field Landscapes of Native North America Thesis (Ph. D.). Madison:

The University of Wisconsin, 2003.iv Gartner, Gustav William. Raised Field Landscapes of Native North America Thesis (Ph. D.). Madison:

The University of Wisconsin, 2003.v Gartner, Gustav William. Raised Field Landscapes of Native North America Thesis (Ph. D.). Madison:

The University of Wisconsin, 2003.vi O'Sullivan, John L. (JulyAugust 1845)."Annexation".United States Magazine and Democratic

Review17 (1): 510. Retrieved 2008-05-20.vii''Terra Nullius. English Dictionary.

www.allwords.com/wordterra+nullius.html|publisher=Allwords.com: 15 June 2010.viiiBrody, Hugh. The Peoples Land: Eskimos and Whites in the Easter Arctic. New York, NY: Penguin

Books, 1977.ix Jack Weatherford Native Roots, How the Indians Enriched America. New York, NY: Ballantine

Books, l99l.x Jack Weatherford Native Roots, How the Indians Enriched America. New York, NY: Ballantine Books,

l99l.xiBrody, Hugh. The Peoples Land: Eskimos and Whites in the Easter Arctic. New York, NY: Penguin

Books, 1977.xii Gartner, Gustav William. Raised Field Landscapes of Native North America Thesis (Ph. D.).

Madison: The University of Wisconsin, 2003.xiii Gartner, Gustav William. Raised Field Landscapes of Native North America Thesis (Ph. D.).

Madison: The University of Wisconsin, 2003.xiv Gartner, Gustav William. Raised Field Landscapes of Native North America Thesis (Ph. D.).

Madison: The University of Wisconsin, 2003.

xv United States. Office of Indian AffairsAnnual report of the commissioner of Indian affairs, for theyear 1866 G.P.O., [1866] v. : fold. maps ; 23 cm.xvi Childs, Colonel Ebenezer. "Recollections of Wisconsin Since 1820." 1859. MS. State Historical

Society of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. 508 p. ; 23 cm.
http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/HIS/f01/HIS202-01/Documents/OSullivan.htmlhttp://web.grinnell.edu/courses/HIS/f01/HIS202-01/Documents/OSullivan.htmlhttp://web.grinnell.edu/courses/HIS/f01/HIS202-01/Documents/OSullivan.htmlhttp://www.allwords.com/word-terra+nullius.html%7Cpublisher=Allwords.comhttp://www.allwords.com/word-terra+nullius.html%7Cpublisher=Allwords.comhttp://www.allwords.com/word-terra+nullius.html%7Cpublisher=Allwords.comhttp://web.grinnell.edu/courses/HIS/f01/HIS202-01/Documents/OSullivan.html

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