04/02/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly placed on these reservations, without any previous consultation as to their own wishes, and that, when once so located, they have been made to remain on the reservation for their own good and for the general good of the country. If any lesson can be drawn from the Indian policy of the United States, it is that the determination of this policy is for the legislative and executive branches of the government and that when once so decided upon, the courts should not interfere to upset a carefully planned governmental system. Perhaps, just as many forceful reasons exist for the segregation of the Manguianes in Mindoro as existed for the segregation of the different Indian tribes in the United States."[153] Rubi applied the concept of Indian land grants or reservations in the Philippines. An Indian reservation is a part of the public domain set apart by proper authority for the use and occupation of a tribe or tribes of Indians.[154] It may be set apart by an act of Congress, by treaty, or by executive order, but it cannot be established by custom and prescription.[155] Indian title to land, however, is not limited to land grants or reservations. It also covers the "aboriginal right of possession or occupancy."[156] The aboriginal right of possession depends on the actual occupancy of the lands in question by the tribe or nation as their ancestral home, in the sense that such lands constitute definable territory occupied exclusively by the particular tribe or nation. [157] It is a right which exists apart from any treaty, statute, or other governmental action, although in numerous instances treaties have been negotiated with Indian tribes, recognizing their aboriginal possession and delimiting their occupancy rights or settling and adjusting their boundaries.[158] American jurisprudence recognizes the Indians' or native Americans' rights to land they have held and occupied before the "discovery" of the Americas by the Europeans. The earliest definitive statement by the U.S. Supreme Court on the nature of aboriginal title was made in 1823 in Johnson & Graham's Lessee v. M'Intosh.[159] In Johnson, the plaintiffs claimed the land in question under two (2) grants made by the chiefs of two (2) Indian tribes. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to recognize this conveyance, the plaintiffs being private persons. The only conveyance that was recognized was that made by the Indians to the government of the European discoverer. Speaking for the court, Chief Justice Marshall pointed out that the potentates of the old world believed that they had made ample compensation to the inhabitants of the new world by bestowing civilization and Christianity upon them; but in addition, said the court, they found it necessary, in order to avoid conflicting settlements and consequent war, to establish the principle that discovery gives title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, the discovery was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.[160] The exclusion of all other Europeans gave to the nation making the discovery the sole right of acquiring the soil from the natives and establishing settlements upon it. As regards the natives, the court further stated that: elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/36882 34/148