Pagans in the Promised Land

Pagans in the Promised Land provides a startling challenge to U.S. federal Indian law and policy. Using history and cognitive theory, Steven Newcomb demonstrates how U.S. government officials have used religious concepts of Christendom, often unconsciously, to justify the taking of Native American lands and to deny the original independence of Indian nations. He demonstrates that the landmark case Johnson v. M'Intosh is premised in part on the Old Testament narrative of the "chosen people" having a divine right to the "promised land," and how continued U.S. reliance on ancient religious distinctions between "Christians" and "heathens" violates the bedrock doctrine of separations of church and state. An important addition to Native American and legal scholarship, Pagans in the Promised Land makes a compelling case for the reversal of this conqueror-based doctrine, which continues to influence U.S. federal Indian law and policy to this day.