When the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues convenes on May 7th in New York, native peoples around the world will turn their eyes to the most important effort to renounce the Doctrine of Discovery, a 15th century Papal bull that has been exploited for five centuries to deny the human rights of hundreds of millions of people who continue to be subject to its power.
The Doctrine got its first expression in 1452, when Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull to Portuguese King Alfonso V authorizing the King to "invade, capture, vanquish and subdue ... all Saracens and pagans, and other enemies of Christ ... to reduce such persons to perpetual slavery" and further "to take away all their possessions and property." This bull was issued as Portuguese ships began colonizing areas of Africa occupied by millions of indigenous non-Christian peoples.
Forty years later, soon after Christopher Columbus' voyage across the Atlantic ignited an imperialist rush by European powers to control the so-called New World, Pope Alexander VI issued Inter Cetera, a new Papal bull that granted those European monarchs the right to claim sovereignty over these newly "discovered" lands occupied by non-Christian "barbarous nations." Those non-Christians were what we now call American Indians, including my ancestors in the Onondaga Nation, part of the confederacy of Indian nations we call Haudenosaunee, and Americans and Canadians call the Iroquois.
It didn't matter to the Christian invaders that we had lived here for millennia, or that 500 years earlier, our forebearers ended generations of war by creating a peaceful confederacy that became a model for the United States government. All that mattered was that we -- along with hundreds of millions of other indigenous peoples living in non-Christian lands across the globe -- were living on land that the conquerors, and the colonists that followed, wanted for their own.
It has been a long path to get the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to confront the racist underpinnings of the Doctrine of Discovery, in part because the Papal Nuncio, the Vatican's representative to the UN, has claimed it is ancient history and no longer relevant.
But as recently as 2005, the United States Supreme Court, relying on a series of Indian law cases going back to 1823, specifically cited the Doctrine in its decision denying the right of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York to restore its right of sovereignty over land it owned within the footprint of territory set aside for the Nation under treaties dating back to the 18th century.
"Under the Doctrine of Discovery ... fee title to the land occupied by Indians when the colonists arrived became vested in the sovereign -- first the discovering European nation and later the original States and the United States," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the 2005 decision.
It is glaring who is left out of that formulation -- the people who lived here for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived.
In fact, the Doctrine of Discovery is the basis for all Indian land law in this country, and it has imposed similar burdens on indigenous peoples all over the world -- in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in Africa, in Latin America and in the island nations of the Caribbean and Oceania. More than 500 million indigenous peoples around the globe live today with the effects of the Doctrine's oppressive racism.
We are encouraged that people of faith in this country and around the world have joined in the call for the Catholic Church to formally renounce the Doctrine to help heal the grievous injuries that its promulgation has released. Most recently, the World Council of Churches, at its meeting this past February in Switzerland, denounced the Doctrine "as fundamentally opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and as a violation of the inherent human rights that all individuals and peoples have received from God." The World Council went on to urge governments "to dismantle the legal structures and policies based on the Doctrine of Discovery and dominance, so as to empower and enable Indigenous Peoples to identify their own aspirations and issues of concern."
This is not ancient history to Indians in this country, or to indigenous peoples around the world. It is a living insult to our rights as citizens of the world and must be renounced. We are on the Earth to heal the world. This wound must be healed.
Was it wrong for Europeans to move out into the world and dispossess native peoples of the land they had inhabited for generations? Under modern conceptions: yes. Although, I must point out that under the "law" as it existed at that time, in practically all societies, what they did was perfectly legitimate, even in Iroquois society. The story that the Iroquois had formed a "peaceful" confederacy leaves out the part where they were constantly at war with their neighbors: the Huron, Delaware, and Susquehanna, and Erie. The only difference between European and American Indian foreign relations before the arrival of Europeans in the Americas was that European warfare was more technologically and strategically sophisticated.
That being said, dispossessing the current owners of "Indian" lands, or even forcing them to pay compensation for such land, would only compound the original wrong by creating an entirely new one. It would be wrong to force current non-Indian Americans to pay for the sins of their ancestors. The better answer is to provide educational and other services to Indians, perhaps free of charge, until Indian living standards are at least no less than 80% that of the rest of Americans. It's always better to even out inequality by helping the bottom group up rather than by pushing the top group down.
I can go on, secondly, what do you mean "bottom group"? If in terms of historically marginalized, culturally eradicated (attempted) and assimilated groups called Indigenous Peoples, I would agree. I don't believe that there are any forms of "better" or "lesser" groups, only people.
Lastly, the aim of your proposal, the issue, "non-Indains paying for the sins of their ancestors..." There is nothing in there making residents "pay" for anything. The goal of the Haudenosaunee is to heal the damage done to the earth. I mean really, do you like to beathe clean air and drink fresh water? Do you like to live? You can think what you want, and I do respect you for knowing about some of Native and US history, but my challange for you is to look into the other half with an open mind and an open heart. It's mankind that Natives like Tadadaho-- look after.
Whether or not you accept this as a possibility, I think you attention to this is needed! Thank you for your input. --Hugh
Yes, I agree, and I also point out that it's a living insult to all of our Indigenous Ancestors. I am an American with a mixed background of Finnish, Scottish, Polish, German, and Cree (Native American tribe in Canada). Excepting the Cree, each of my inherited countries of origin were comprised of different peoples descending from various Indigenous Tribes and only recently nationalized. Recently, in the sense that genetically modern humans have been on this planet for 200,000 years.
Peoples of Arab decent occupied the Palestinian lands for hundreds of years, but because of book of mythology compiled about 2500 years ago, people of Jewish decent claimed the right and the power to force a foreign state into the Middle East. If the Israelis can claim the lands of ancient Israel, then by the same reasoning, then the peoples of the First Nations can "legitimately" claim the entire western hemisphere.
The Doctrine of Discovery can be used and convoluted by whomever has the power, and willingness to use violence, to do so.
winfield ihlow
SUNY Oswego
Most of the Natives in the Dakota's are poor, many of the Natives in MN are living well but do not share in the riches of casinos there. Healing begins in the heart and from there can be shared with all living things. Native voices are such that we number so few and virtually no one listens that I feel a healing for the planet at this time is little more than wishful thinking. Alaska Natives are farther along in their healing because of reasons I have not understood as yet. Maybe because they were not slaughtered as the lower 48 were that they held more of the power needed to remain whole and heal. Maybe they are the ones that can guide the rest of us to that place of forgiving and moving on.
Part 1
I know many Native people, I have family in North Carolina, Indiana and my adopted tribe in Minnesota and I know many more through association. While this article touches ever so lightly on the problems facing Natives world over it does little to address the inherit issues that brought us here. Natives in the US are considered a conquered people and despite the battles won or lost over the course of history it is a proper term to use in my opinion. History is written by those who win the battles and the war. There are discrepancies in white accounts and Native but the result is the same. We were removed from our homes and dispersed to the four winds. Healing the planet is a false idea it simply cannot be done by us more because of the polluted spirits that run through all of us than anything else. Natives have become either false Indians, rich Indians or poor Indians. False because they ignore who they are or were and are more white than many I know. Rich because they use the positions in casinos to make money at the expense of others. Poor because they have been beaten down so far that they cannot begin to fathom how to get back up.
Can we accept that looking at the moral principles that are the basis of a law should be done before mindlessly applying precident.
how can one organization survive while being so consistently wrong on every issue.
I correspond with an orphanage in South Dakota that cares for Native American children and the assistance they receive from The Bureau of Indian Affairs is almost non-existent.
How savage would you become, should you see hundreds of green and purple men advancing on the shores of Long Island to reclaim their homeland?
The trouble is, Americans can't imagine that sort of thing and become blind, deaf and dumb whenever Native rights are discussed. Setting aside the illegal and immoral behavior justified in the Middle Ages, what about more modern promises, treaties and covenants our nation made with Native Americans from the time of the first presidents up to today - imperiously 'granting' lands back to their rightful owners in bits and pieces (but nonetheless substantial in sum)? The Black HIlls of Dakota; Cherokee lands in the East; lands of the Haudenosaunee: all these and much more were negotiated, signed off on and subsequently stolen a second time when it suited the government to do so. I can see why indigenous peoples are leery of anything we say.