Posted on 03/13/2013 11:16:09 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
A 15th century Catholic decree permitting Europeans to seize Indian land in the New World is a load of papal bull.
That was the message Tuesday from the Onondaga Nation, which is calling on the new Pope to revoke the so-called Discovery Doctrine, which evolved from a papal decree written by Pope Nicholas V in 1455.
“Now is the time for the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church to extend a hand and talk about these issues,” said Tonya Frichner, the president of the American Indian Law Alliance.
The Discovery Doctrine was a key element in the moral justification of the European conquest of indigenous people around the world and remains influential in legal circles.
In the U.S., it is often cited as a way of arguing that the nomadic Native Americans occupied the land but did not own it.
“The doctrine of discovery put us in the same place as the buffaloes and rabbits, roaming the land,” said Oren Lyons, a faith keeper of the Turtle Clan in the Onondaga nation. “We didn't have right of title to land, but rather occupancy.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the doctrine in a 2005 ruling against the Oneida Indian Nation. The ruling affirmed the government’s sovereignty over lands, even if they’re sold to an Indian tribe.
If the church were to dissavow the decree, Lyons said it would remove a legal argument against tribal land claims.
Frichner said Onondaga elders first pushed the church to revoke the doctrine in 1992. Pope John Paul II was open to discussions about the the doctrine, she said, but Pope Benedict shut them down.
Talks “were reduced to, ‘Well, this is old history,’” Frichner said.
The Discovery Doctrine is expected to be a hot topic Wednesday as the entire Iroquois Confederacy rallies at the National Museum of the American Indian in lower Manhattan to commemorate a 400-year-old treaty with the Dutch.
The protest against the Discovery Doctrine won’t fade once the white smoke dissipates from the Sistine Chapel chimney. In August, Native Americans will embark on a 13-day canoe trip from Albany to New York City to symbolize the common ground they share with European settlers — a relationship that could be improved with the renunciation of the heinous papal declaration.
“There are over 500 million indigenous people throughout the world — they'd like a response from the Holy See,” Frichner said.
Good one, perhaps we also need to have the Indians ask the head of the ecclesial community of England to do something similar. However, it seems even the Indians know deep down what is really a Church and what is not as they made the request of the Pope, not protestant christian leader from England, or the Netherlands, or the Southern Baptist Convention, of the Association of Evangelicals, etc.
There was colonization going on before 1492.
Thanks for the clarification !
Discovery Doctrine was supposed to be used by the RCC to mark off territory for evangelization, not civil control. European powers with a fever for New World gold ran with it. The new pope will not do anything to refute the doctrine.
Spanish and French explorers coming through parts of Texas and a few small colonies and missions hardly constitute Mexicans as indigenous to Texas. There was a presence I’ll admit. The real colonization is occurring before our eyes; only this time Americans have been selected to lose.
a win/ win situation comrade.
Had American aborigines the organization, the ships, the weapons, etc., they would have invaded Europe and wreaked havoc on those societies.
But they didn’t. Even the vaunted Iroquois were cannibals to boot.
Screw ‘em.
The only good indian is a Cleveland Indian!
“Pizarro and Cortes...had armies of oppressed vassal states eager to overthrow their masters.”
That plus lances, armor and horses; especially horses. Time and again during the conquest, the Inca struggled to deal with the horsemen, they dug pits and set traps, but failed every time. The Spaniards were great lancemen.
The self-righteousness of some who seek to wriggle from the finger of accusation is amazing, don’t you think?
the Indians would say that you bought the land from someone who stole it from them.....you don't own it because the guy who sold it to you stole it!!!from them....give it back!!
In the U.S., the settlers found an almost empty continent, whose relative handful of inhabitants almost all lived by hunting, and who had few or no fixed settlements, nor, therefore, any solid basis for claiming title to the land, over which they merely roamed. And, even so, the settlers frequently paid the Indian tribes for the relinquishment of their claims to rights of hunting and camping. In this sense, they purchased Manhattan Island and many other, far more substantial pieces of territory from the Indian tribes. Thus, in the United States, it is true to say that the historical record of the overwhelming majority of property holdings in free of violent appropriation-that practically all property holdings can be traced back through voluntary purchases and sales to a point of peaceable appropriation from nature on the part of heir very first owners.
I’d like them to identify what land they owned versus simply gypsied.
Not unlike the State of Pennsylvania, where the Quakers PAID the Indians for a great deal of land.
Still doesn’t change the fact that the policy is ridiculous.
Why was the policy ridiculous?
Interesting that the leftist NY Daily News had this at hand as their first headline.
The entire world has been divided up based on the right of conquest. Where would you like to start with making that all right?
I wasn’t alive in the in the fifteenth century, so I don’t feel the much in the way of guilt.
It would be interesting to see how us modern folks would respond in a similar situation. We have had a space travelors come back from a from a distant world and inform us that the world is full of what we need, and is only inhabited by strange animals and an odd species of that shows more intelligence than animals, but is not of the same species as us and not nearly as intelligent as us. In fact, some of our space voyagers think this is just a different kind of animal that we have encountered before.
Is it OK for us to colonize the planet?
That may sound crazy, but it is just about exactly what the Church had to work with at the time in the way of reliable information.
I’m not advocating giving the land back. I’m just saying there is no reason to not rescind this policy, now, unless you can tell me one.
Texas won their independence at the battle of San Jacinto on on April 21, 1836. Condition of Santa Anna’s release was Texas. The End...
One of my ancestors was born in the Republic of Texas.
This is my home.
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