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Denouncing the Doctrine of Discovery as the basis for exploitation of indigenous peoples

Papal bull that granted those European monarchs the right to claim sovereignty over these newly “discovered” lands occupied by non-Christian “barbarous nations.” 

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. 

Stand for Human Rights for Indigenous Peoples and Renounce the ’Doctrine of Discovery’  HUFFINGTON POST, Tadodaho Sid HillSpiritual Leader, Haudenosaunee (Six Nations/Iroquois Confederacy), 15 May 12,
When the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues convened on May 7th in New York, native peoples around the world  turned 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 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.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tadodaho-sid-hill/indigenous-human-rights_b_1491528.html

May 17, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, history, indigenous issues, Religion and ethics