Introduction

Abstract

A Christian imagination of colonial discovery permeated the early modern world, and biblical interpretation shaped it in various ways, but legal histories played out in different ways depending on the imperial jurisdictions. Concepts of rights shifted over the centuries from theological to secular frameworks, and more recently, from anthropocentric and individualist assumptions to ecologically embedded and corporate concepts of Indigenous rights. Bearing in mind the differences between ancient and modern notions of indigeneity, a fresh understanding of this history is timely as settler colonial states reflect on the implications of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007 and seek to embed its principles in domestic laws and new intercultural practices.