The formation of a new state, the United States of America, under the banner of human rights protection, resulted in a massive violation of the rights of other people who were not white colonists. The new American state intensively expanded its borders without regard for the rights of the indigenous population in the territories being developed (Deloria, 1988). The legal basis for these acts of violence was likewise drawn up accordingly. The first important concept is the right of ownership and discovery. According to the principles of discovery, the people who uncover new lands take title to them, while the natives of those lands retain the right to live on the land but do not own it.
This principle has been used to dispossess Aboriginal people of the land doctrinally considered as no man’s land in favor of colonial or post-colonial governments. Treaties were imposed on the dispossessed Indians, whereby certain new lands were given to them (Deloria, 1988). From this, it can be concluded that the U.S. was not only violating legal norms but was the initiator of those benefits to only one side. The Doctrine of Discovery was, in fact, a derivative of the Doctrine of Conquest, more blatant and crude. The Americans only modernized and reformulated the former medieval doctrine, explicitly justifying violence against the indigenous peoples and the taking of their lands.
Equally important is the concept of conquest, which took place latently because of the desire to avoid responsibility. The Doctrine of Discovery applied equally to the legal status of territories and the population acquired in both cases by a single fact – conquest, that is, the military defeat of the vanquished (Deloria, 1988). Moreover, it was on the doctrine of conquest that colonialism initially rested. Therefore, from the first half of the nineteenth century, with the change in legal doctrines, the conqueror was no longer called the conqueror but the discoverer of new lands (Deloria, 1988).
The new doctrine was the basic rule of the game between invaders from different colonial states in the division of territories and justified the dispossession of local Indians. Equally important is the concept of sovereignty because the young American nation, itself a fruitful user of natural law theory as applied to itself, decided to deprive the native population of such a right. This massive violation of human rights and freedoms had disastrous consequences. The Native Americans were no longer independent, and no tribe within U.S. territory was recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or authority with which the U.S. could enter into treaties.
Reference
Deloria, V. (1988). Custer died for your sins: An Indian manifesto. University of Oklahoma Press.