ABSTRACT
Despite its evident Eurocentric assumptions, the doctrine of discovery has been cited by the Supreme Court as recently as 2014 and continues to frame much scholarship about the early-modern Atlantic world. Scholars can subvert this state of affairs by reimagining discovery within the western paradigm as something that could be claimed by Indians. This task requires an unpacking of the colonial use of discovery as both an intellectual project of firsting and as a legal tool for creating European property rights. It also demands a countering of Eurocentric epistemologies with alternative ways of knowing advocated by native scholars such as Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Colonial charters and legal documents deliberately exclude Indians from discovery, even while the records of early encounters showed Indigenous peoples engaged in acts of discovery and knowledge creation, including Indian visitors to Europe and native sources that purported both physical and spiritual pre-Columbian journeys. By reconsidering discovery in multiple registers, the legitimation of native dispossession becomes problematized and the relationship between Europeans and native people during colonial encounters can be reconceptualized as active, mutual, and ongoing processes of learning for Indigenous as much as European peoples.
