Lecture: Dwayne Tomah - "The Doctrine of Discovery"

Join UGA's Institute of Native American Studies for a talk on the Doctrine of Discovery and its lasting implications for Native Americans, tribal sovereignty, "in trust" reserve land, and land title in the United States by Passamaquoddy language keeper Dwayne Tomah.

Tomah is a storyteller, cultural preservationist, and youngest fluent speaker of Passamaquoddy language, and director of the Sipayik Musuem at Passamaquoddy Pleasant Point Reservation in Washington County, Maine.

“The more we educate, the more we do outreach, and the more we build these relationships with one another, the better off we will be,” Tomah said. “It takes time. It takes patience, cooperation, resiliency, and most of all, trust.”

Tomah will present a closer look at a 500-year-old concept that facilitated European land seizures and domination of the Indigenous people of what is now the United States. That is the Doctrine of Discovery, the legal and religious concept established by papal decrees in 1493 and 1494 and applied for centuries by European monarchs to justify Christian conquest of non-Christian people and lands.

This event is co-sponsored by UGA INAS; the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Athens; James F. Brooks, Carl & Sally Gable Distinguished Professor of History; and The Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.

Learn more about Dwayne Tomah and his work here and here and here.

Some text in this announcement is adapted from the Colby News article "A Bridge Between Cultures."