Mapping the Doctrine of Discovery

We talk with Tom Porter about how colonization and the Revolutionary War reshaped Mohawk and Haudenosaunee leadership, identity, and survival, including the complicated legacy of Joseph Brant. We also work through what decolonization looks like on the ground: restoring trust, practicing restraint, and making room for condolence and real apologies.
discovering family lineage connected to Joseph Brant and the Mohawk kings
leadership based on natural ability versus European bureaucracy
church pressure on matrilineal clan systems and the shift toward inherited titles
decolonization as retrieval of original instructions without shaming people
the “rattlesnake skin” metaphor for leadership without life
why Longhouse relationships are not faith-based but lived
redefining “warrior” as carrying ancestors forward through ceremony and protection
“rattlesnake people” ethics of warning, restraint, and defense
colonization tactics through trade, alcohol, courts, and fear
factional conflict at Akwesasne and choosing reconciliation over escalation
condolence as healing practice and the power of a direct apology

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We talk about how Haudenosaunee ceremonies survived generations of fear, shame, and punishment, and why we decide it is time to share teachings openly without asking anyone to become Mohawk. We connect creation stories, matrilineal leadership, and the Thanksgiving Address to a clear environmental message: renew a living relationship with Mother Earth before we lose what keeps our children alive. 
Themes
the Freedom School as language preservation and ceremonial continuity 
the Thanksgiving Address as the spiritual frame for meetings 
universal teachings across nations symbolized by the drum 
matrilineal governance and women vetting leadership 
Turtle Island creation story and ceremony as responsibility 
challenging “myth” labels and correcting misnamed healing traditions 
Mother Earth’s equinox request for rest, gratitude, and reconnection 

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View the transcript and show notes at podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org.  Learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery on our site DoctrineofDiscovery.org.

Clicking “I agree” can feel harmless until you hear what it echoes. We follow a striking thread from the Doctrine of Discovery and Terra Nullius to the digital present, where human attention and behavior are often treated as if they belong to no one, ready to be “discovered” and taken. Our guest, a mixed-heritage settler Mennonite and Taino scholar who teaches AI ethics and policy at Queen’s University, opens with a jarring comparison between colonial “terms of subjugation” and today’s terms of service agreements.

From there, we map Data Nullius: the idea that platform capitalism converts lived experience into corporate assets by first making it legible. With Édouard Glissant as a guide, we dig into how Western “comprehension” can operate like seizure, reducing relationships into measurable objects. We connect papal bulls and Johnson v. McIntosh to the property grammar of res nullius and show how that grammar resurfaces when data becomes metadata, signals, and behavioral traces that AI systems can ingest.

The conversation moves through the history of statistics and state counting, Quetelet’s “average man,” Galton’s ranking, WWII-era computing, and the rise of surveillance infrastructure. We also keep Indigenous resistance in view, including the right to opacity and community-forward governance like the OCAP principles, which predate many mainstream data protections. Finally, we confront modern data ownership fights around large language models, genomic data, privacy law, contract law, and the hypocrisy of platforms claiming “our data” while individuals are left with little real control.

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View the transcript and show notes at podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org.  Learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery on our site DoctrineofDiscovery.org.

Ever wonder how a 15th‑century church decree still shapes who owns land in the United States today? We follow the Doctrine of Discovery from papal bulls and royal charters to Supreme Court opinions, then ground that history in living Haudenosaunee sovereignty at the Scano Great Law of Peace Center—a collaborative space built on values, relationship, and the Two Row Wampum way of working side by side without domination.

We open up Charles H. Long’s influence to frame religion as a structure of meaning that orders power and history, then test that frame against the erasures baked into American myths. You’ll hear how Jesuit deeds claimed Onondaga land before arrival, why the Sullivan–Clinton campaign marked a violent turn, and how “Christian discovery” morphed into U.S. property law in Johnson v. McIntosh and resurfaced in City of Sherrill v. Oneida. A retranslation of the papal bulls makes the language of conquest legible, while a frank look at personal ancestry—Mayflower lines, the Pequot War, the Erie Canal—models accountability to the benefits and harms we inherit.

From there, we widen the lens through decolonial and Indigenous studies: coloniality as a living order, the white possessive as an ontology of control, and racial capitalism’s demand for land. We track bans on Indigenous ceremonies, the Dawes Act’s allotments, and then the resurgence that refuses disappearance—urban ceremonies, language renewal, landback, and a metaphysic of kinship with more‑than‑human relatives. A womanist reading of the lynching of Eliza Woods confronts the semiotics of terror and exposes how Christian nationalism sanctifies domination, calling us to craft counter‑meanings rooted in art, ritual, and communal care.

We close by pairing Long with Sylvia Wynter to ask a bolder question: what new myth of the human can we create beyond either‑or binaries and nation‑state horizons? Thinking blackness as method and Indigenous covenant as practice, we sketch a path that is material, epistemic, and spiritual—toward institutions and relationships that embody right relation rather than reenact extraction.

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View the transcript and show notes at podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org.  Learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery on our site DoctrineofDiscovery.org.

The story begins with a mentor called simply “the teacher.” From a first lecture on sky gods to late-night phone calls and a leather coat the color of memory, we trace how Charles H. Long shaped minds through myth, method, and a rare musicality of thought. We share how he taught us to start with a text, a myth, a story—and then keep going until we hit the pre-logos ground where creation actually happens.

We unpack three core lessons that still unsettle and inspire. First, creation myths are not artifacts; they are tools for making new worlds. Long showed how societies encode creativity in sound and gesture, how ritual returns words to silence so meaning can breathe. Second, this country is racist to the core. Drawing on Vico and Herder, we explore why “origins cue the structure,” how founding potencies persist beneath renovations, and why thinking is a form of action that disrupts the clever priests of national ritual. Third, hope for a new creation myth lies with the colonized—the “colonizer watchers” who know the resources born in the tragic encounter and can turn them toward a future for everyone.

You’ll step with us into the residue of a life: yellow legal pads, nicotine-stained spines, file cabinets, and a shed that feels like an eschatological portal. We talk about improvisation as a scholarly ethic, Long as a bricoleur who arranged books by living adjacency, not rigid taxonomy. We hear tributes from Mexico and remember the laughter, the smoke, and the sly looks that signified more than footnotes ever could. We ask who gets to decide what counts as East and West and why a theology that listens—to screams, moans, chants, and jazz—can break the back of words and set new language free.

If you’re drawn to religious studies, decolonial thought, Black hermeneutics, or theopoetics, this journey offers a rigorous and human portrait of a thinker who kept thought alive. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves big ideas, and leave a review with the lesson that stayed with you most.
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View the transcript and show notes at podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org.  Learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery on our site DoctrineofDiscovery.org.