Indigenous peoples: Did you mean...?

The Doctrine of Discovery is a policy enacted initially by the 15th-century Catholic Church proclaiming the right of Christian nations to take possession of the lands of non-Christians in the interest of saving their souls. Non-Christians...

Dreamtime (The Dreaming) is the English term used to describe the mythology and spirituality of Indigenous Australians. It is a philosophy, worldview, cosmology, and way of life that explains how the world was created. Although people often...

The Columbian exchange is a term coined by Alfred Crosby Jr. in 1972 that is traditionally defined as the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World of Europe and Africa and the New World of the Americas. The exchange...

The encomienda was a system where Spanish adventurers and settlers were granted the legal right to extract forced labour from indigenous tribal chiefs in the Americas colonies of the Spanish Empire. In return, the Europeans were expected...

European explorers began to probe the Western Hemisphere in the early 1500s, and they found to their utter amazement not only a huge landmass but also a world filled with several diverse and populous indigenous cultures. Among their most...

The conquistadors, meaning "conquerors", were Iberian military adventurers who operated as the vanguard of empires in the 15th and 16th centuries by exploring areas of the world unknown to Europeans, defeating indigenous armies, and then...

Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, the governor-general of New France, performs a war dance with his Native American (likely Wabanaki) allies in 1690, at the height of King William's War. By Charles William Jefferys, circa 1914. (Library...

The Spanish Requirement or Requerimiento was a document intended to be read out to and agreed upon by indigenous peoples during the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Created in 1513, the document outlined the history of Christianity, the...

La Malinche, or Malintzin, was the primary interpreter in the retinue of Hernán Cortés during his conquest of Mexico in the early 16th century and has become one of the most divisive women in Mexican history. Though she was called Malintzin...

An illustration showing the torture of indigenous American peoples by Spanish conquistadors. From the 1552 edition of A Very Brief Recital of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas which was a graphic indictment of the exploitation...