Christian ‘doctrine’ fueled dehumanization: UNPFII report

[icymist]

NEW YORK – A groundbreaking report examining the roots of Christian domination over indigenous peoples and their lands was released this week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

North American Representative to the Permanent Forum Tonya Gonnella Frichner, an attorney and founder of the American Indian Law Alliance, presented a preliminary study on the “Doctrine of Discovery” and its historical impacts on indigenous peoples, with a focus on how it became part of United States laws.

<snip>
The Vatican’s Doctrine of Discovery was based on the premise that all non-Christian land belonged to no one because no Christians were living there and no Christian monarch or lord had yet claimed dominion. Once Christian monarchies like Spain or France claimed the right of dominion, that claim was transferred to political successors over centuries.

<snip>
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall identified the royal charters of Great Britain pertaining to North America as the source of the argument that “discovery gave title” to the government by whose authority the “discovery” was made.

More at Indian Country Today

[foxfeet]

1. Thanks for posting. Recommended,

[Fridays Child]

2. Wherein FC and a multitude of others uttered in unison...

DUH!

;)

[AnArmyVeteran]

3. Thank you for this link about native Americans & the Christian influence over them...

I've been working on a film about native Hawaiians and how they are being forced off of their own islands. The cost of living is pressuring many to leave and move to the mainland (continental US). Christian missionaries also polluted the Hawaiian culture, telling them that being naked in public was bad. Before Christian missionaries invaded the Hawaiian islands there wasn't even a word in the Hawaiian language for the word 'steal'. But leave it to the missionaries to inject guilt and fear into any culture they infest.

http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/content/92454329.html

[texastoast]

4. Um, they were already discovered

Or is that revisionist?

[icymist]

6. What do you mean, texastoast?

What do you mean by revisionist?

[texastoast]

9. I'm thinking about what I was taught in school

Columbus "discovered" America. The fact that he "discovered" it about 10,000+ years after our Native Americans wasn't ever mentioned.

I get accused by my right-wing family that such a statement is revisionist history. Consider the source.

[icymist]

11. You can inform your RW family that they're following a mandate of The Pope

Which is what Columbus used when he 'discovered' this land:
<snip>
The Doctrine of Discovery was among Vatican mandates dating back to the 15th century, called papal bulls, that declared Christian monarchs had the right to claim superior title over land and territories that they “discovered.”

The claimed right of “dominion” over Native peoples was based on the thinking that non-Christians were “heathens and uncivilized savages,” with no, or limited rights, to land.

They will probably either ignore this or tell some theory of 'historical precedent' to continue this version of history.

[Angry Dragon]

5. Just waiting for them

to claim that they are being persecuted again. To claim that ones that do not have a god in their life just do not understand that it is god's will.

[AnArmyVeteran]

7. Hitler might be in heaven, while Mother Teresa is in Hell...

Hitler might have had a convenient preacher in his bunker to 'save' him at the last second. A 'reborn' Hitler would be spared an eternity in hell. But Mother Teresa might have gone to hell because it was later revealed that she had great doubts about her faith.

And remember, even in the Bible it states you can't get to 'heaven' by good deeds alone. So someone who unselfishly helped others all their lives will go to hell, but a murderer who professes his 'belief' in Jesus just before he is executed will go to heaven. Yeah, that's a fair god. I know 'life wasn't fair', but should we also be subjected to an unfair hereafter too!!!

[Angry Dragon]

8. I am really getting tired

of the people that claim to be christian, pick and choose what they want out of the bible, think they are better than everyone else, and when you call them on it it is that you are attacking them.

[AnArmyVeteran]

12. Me too Angry Dragon... and when they think theyre being picked on it feeds their persecution complex

They like it when they feel like they are being 'persecuted' for their beliefs. That just adds fuel to their beliefs that those who are 'evil' will constantly test them and it also makes them feel like mini-martyrs, fueling their demented religious beliefs even more...

Conservative extremism is a cult.
Religious right christian extremists is a cult.

And when you combine conservative extremism and religious right extremism you get a mutant cult of crazies. They are always absolutely right because they believe they are speaking for god. When the opposite is usually the case...

[RandomThoughts]

10. I actually do not accept anything that is as bad that happens around me as being God's will.

Although it is conceivable it is part of some bigger plan, I don't accept hardship because it can create apathy.

To say it is God's will, in my view is that God has a better path in his plan. Some people use God's will argument to say they should have much, and to not care about those in hardship. Or worse to accept despair in some things.


So to think that as a way to find comfort while going through difficulty is one thing, but to think it creating apathy or loss of empathy is bad.

What was God's will for Job, his original wealth? his Hardship? or his later wealth. (Wealth being family and comfort)


Many people can be held back in caring for others, or striving forward themselves even with concepts of Lot, because anyone's Lot can change any day, so it should not define a person, nor be a claim of persecution, but one of comfort in a temporary hardship.

[sarcasmo]

13. Kick, back to the top.

[MisterP]

14. it would be quite a book that charts the rise and creation of "imperial churches"

especially given that the churches served as the intelligentsia (waningly so over the 17th-19th c.), and that Sepulveda and de las Casas and Juan López de Palacios Rubios (author of the jaw-dropping Requerimiento) came from the exact same background

the "doctrine of discovery" was a self-serving convenience, just like the subsequent "missions civilatrices" of the 19th and now the 21st centuries