Indigenous Leaders Want Pope Francis To Rescind Bull Justifying Imperialism
Source: Huffington Post
Indigenous Leaders Want Pope Francis To Rescind Bull Justifying Imperialism
The Doctrine of Discovery, which allowed taking indigenous land 500 years ago, still underpins Indian law in the U.S.
Julian Brave NoiseCat
Native Issues Fellow, The Huffington Post
Posted: 09/25/2015 04:45 PM EDT | Edited: 27 minutes ago
Ahead of Pope Francis’ arrival in Philadelphia, indigenous leaders from across the Americas -- from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in upstate New York to the Qom Nation in Argentina and many places in between -- have gathered in the city to urge the pontiff to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery, a series of papal bulls from the 15th century that justified European colonization of newly "discovered" lands. One particular papal bull, issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1455, authorized Christian nations "to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all ... enemies of Christ," take their land and "reduce their persons to perpetual slavery." The doctrine played a central role in centuries of colonization the world over and resulted in immense loss of land and life by indigenous peoples across the Americas.
"While our people were planting corn, they were planting flags," Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, said in an interview with The Huffington Post.
"The Doctrine of Discovery, from my point of view, from a religious point of view, is the justification for Christians taking the lands of non-Christian people," said Phil Arnold, a professor of religion at Syracuse University.
Long used as a religious backing by colonial powers, the doctrine became the centerpiece of property and Indian law in the United States following the 1823 Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’intosh, Arnold explained. In that case, Justice John Marshall used the doctrine to support the majority opinion of the court, which found that Indians had a right to occupy, but could not own, the ancestral homelands where their people had lived, loved, worshipped, married, mourned and died for millennia.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pope-francis-doctrine-of-discovery_56058eb9e4b0dd8503076c17
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