Recovery from Discovery: Doctrine needs doctoring

(Chief Justice John Marshall)

In an article titled “Native American Spirituality,” Green Spirit asserts that there is no overall religion that all tribes have embraced.  Nevertheless, there are certain key aspects of spirituality that tribes have shared over the centuries.  One of the most prominent of these is a “mystical inter-dependence” between the land and the people.

This quote from Apache leader Geronimo helps to explain such

reverence for the land:  “For each tribe of men Usen created He

also made a home.  In the land for any particular tribe He placed

whatever would be best for the welfare of that tribe…  thus it was

in the beginning: the apaches and their homes each created for the

other by Usen himself.  When they are taken from these homes

they sicken and die.”

For centuries, Europeans have also believed that land was created

just for them.  Many came to America seeking a “promised land” in which they could freely worship the God of the Bible.  Just as the Hebrews allegedly displaced the Canaanites in order to lay claim to their Holy Land – so, too, did the Europeans displace those who were already on Turtle Island.  This notion of European (and later American) God-given entitlement to land was codified by a series of papal bulls and court

decisions that came to be known as the Discovery Doctrine.

According to Wikipedia, Romanus Pontifex is a 1455 CE papal bull that “confirmed to the Crown of Portugal dominion over all lands discovered or conquered…”  It also allowed for the enslavement of non-Christians and indigenous peoples.  Inter caetera was a subsequent 1493 papal bull that seemed to grant similar rights to Spain over certain lands.  In 1823, United States Chief Justice John Marshall harkened back

to these medieval bulls when ruling on the now-infamous Johnson v. M’Intosh case.  The gist of Marshall’s decision was that “private citizens could not purchase lands from Native Americans” since the federal government had sovereignty over the land.  Marshall “justified” this decision with a written recap of the “European Discovery of the Americas and the legal foundation of the American colonies.”  This recap was based upon previous papal proclamations that “a European power gains radical title… to the land it

discovers.”  

It would be liberating to be able to say, “But that was ages ago, and this is now.” However, Steve Newcomb reported in 1992 that “the United States government still uses this archaic Judeo-Christian doctrine to deny the rights of Native American Indians.” 

Resources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine

http://ili.nativeweb.org/sdrm_art.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_v._M%27Intosh

http://www.greenspirit.org.uk/resources/NativeAmerica.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanus_Pontifex

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_caetera

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_doctrine

Copyright June 26, 2012 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved