Indigenous delegates ask Pope to repudiate Doctrine of Discovery

[walksalone11]

I doubt much will come of this.....as usual.
We will see.......


http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/home/content/79636552.html



 By Gale Courey Toensing

Story Published: Dec 21, 2009

Story Updated: Dec 18, 2009

MELBOURNE, Australia – While indigenous delegates from around the world were sidelined at the 15th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, the collective voice of indigenous peoples at the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions was heard calling on the Pope to repudiate the Christian Doctrine of Discovery.

The Doctrine, a fundamentally racist philosophy from the 15th century, continues to allow powerful nation-states to dehumanize people and devastate the living earth in their endless search for resources and markets, the delegation said.

Indigenous peoples from around the world, including a Haudenosaunee delegation, attended the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Australia Dec. 3 – 9.

The Parliament is an interfaith organization formed in 1893 “to cultivate harmony among the world’s religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world and its guiding institutions in order to achieve a just, peaceful and sustainable world.” It meets every five years.

While the delegates came from diverse geographies and cultures, they easily unified around the intersecting themes of the Christian Doctrine of Discovery, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and climate change. The delegates articulated their concerns in a document called “An Indigenous Peoples’ Statement to the World Delivered at The Parliament of the World’s Religions Convened at Melbourne, Australia on the Traditional Lands of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation December 9, 2009.”

The seven point statement calls for immediate action on climate change; the protection of earth-based religions and sacred sites both within and outside their territories; strengthening and protecting indigenous cultures and languages, repatriation of the ancestors’ remains and sacred items, and the support and implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The final item is “To call upon Pope Benedict XVI and the Vatican to publicly acknowledge and repudiate the papal decrees that legitimized the original activities that have evolved into the dehumanizing Doctrine of Christian Discovery and dominion in laws and policies.”

“Overall the trip was very successful in bringing forward the idea of rescinding the papal bulls,” said Jake Swamp, Wolf Clan sub-chief of the Kahniakehaka, Mohawk Nation, author, and founder of the Tree of Peace Society, an international organization promoting peace and environmental conservation.

“I think that’s the most important thing in our time is to finally attack the roots of the oppression experienced by indigenous peoples worldwide.”

The papal bulls were 15th century documents issued by the popes of the Roman Catholic Church giving permission to the kings of Spain and Portugal to conquer and claim “undiscovered” lands, enslave or skill their non-Christian populations, and expropriate their possessions and resources. The English monarchy followed suit with “charters” to explorers such as John Cabot to colonize “the New World.”

The Doctrine of Discovery, which these documents formulated, was a principle of international law – a kind of early trade agreement that whichever Christian European country “discovered” lands populated by non-Christians could claim those lands and resources.

The Doctrine concerns indigenous people all over the world, because it continues to negatively affect people everywhere, said Philip Arnold, associate professor of indigenous religions in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University, and a member of the Haudenosaunee delegation.

Arnold, who is married to a Mohawk woman, participated on a panel with some members of the Haudenosaunee delegation where he discussed how the Doctrine even affects his own family.

The Doctrine justified the establishment of the notorious boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries that aimed to “civilize” Indian children by removing them from their families and stripping them of their language, traditions, and culture, Arnold said.

“My wife’s family suffered through boarding schools, so I was able to talk about the Doctrine and how it negatively impacts us. In those boarding schools, everything was stripped out of these kids, so even though it was more than 100 years ago that my wife’s grandfather was in a boarding school, we still deal with that legacy every day with our children, trying to help them understand what was done and why they don’t participate in Long House ceremonies, for example, because their clans were taken from them by this ‘civilizing’ process.”

He said the panel presentations by the Haudenosaunee delegation were effective in stimulating interest.

“There were a lot of Christians from a variety of denominations and they got very active and wanted to know what they could do to help bring awareness about the Doctrine of Discovery and we encouraged them to do that within their own denominations. There was a Catholic priest who was very animated about this.”

A movement to repudiate the Doctrine is gaining steam among Christian churches since the Episcopal Church issued a resolution renouncing it and urging support of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples at its national meeting last summer. Last September, the Indian Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends made a similar commitment.

Arnold said members of the Haudenosaunee delegation will continue to work to raise awareness of the Doctrine in the hope of gaining a critical mass of grassroots support the Vatican will not be able to ignore.

“The Doctrine maps a cultural attitude – our arrogance – toward the indigenous peoples and the earth. The whole colonial project, which is the legacy of America, is based on these principles, which are directly antagonistic to Native peoples, but also antagonistic to the life systems of the earth. So this idea of Discovery just can’t hold up.”

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Quaker Indian Committee disavows Doctrine of Discovery, affirms
Declaration

By Gale Courey Toensing
http://www.indianco untrytoday. com/home/ content/79059862 .html

Story Updated: Dec 17, 2009

PHILADELPHIA ? Inspired by the actions of the Episcopal Church, a
Quaker group has disavowed the Christian Doctrine of Discovery
<http://ili.nativewe b.org/sdrm_ art.html> and voiced its support for
the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Indian Committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
<http://www.pym- indiancommittee. com/> of the Religious Society of
Friends issued a Minute ? analogous to a resolution ? at its
September meeting.

The committee ?renounces the Doctrine of Discovery, the doctrine at
the foundation of the colonization of Indigenous lands, including
the lands of Pennsylvania. We find this doctrine to be fundamentally
inconsistent with the teaching of Jesus, with our understanding of
the inherent rights that individuals and peoples have received from
God, and inconsistent with Quaker testimonies of Peace, Equality,
and Integrity,? the Minute reads.

The Doctrine of Discovery was a principle of international law
developed in a series of 15th century papal bulls and 16th century
charters by European monarchs. It was a racist philosophy that gave
white Christian Europeans the green light to go forth and claim the
lands and resources of non-Christian peoples and kill or enslave
them ? if other Christian Europeans had not already done so.

The doctrine institutionalized the competition between European
countries in their ever-expanding quest for colonies, resources and
markets, and sanctioned the genocide of indigenous people in the
?New World? and elsewhere.

As a spiritual corollary of the renunciation, the Indian Committee
also expressed its support for the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted by the General Assembly Sept.
13, 2007. The Declaration presents indigenous rights within a
framework of human rights.

Only the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia ? countries with
large populations of indigenous peoples with huge aboriginal land
claims ? voted against the Declaration? s adoption. Australia has
since adopted it.

The action by PYM?s Indian Committee was initiated by Elizabeth
Koopman, who said she was inspired by the Episcopal Church?s
resolution, called ?Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery.? The
resolution passed unanimously by the Episcopal House of Bishops and
by an overwhelming majority of the House of Delegates during the
church?s 76th General Convention held July 8 ? 17 in Anaheim.

Within weeks, Koopman had amassed a packet of materials, including
her own writings, on the Doctrine of Discovery, and sent it out to
her circle of Friends.

?Friends have had a long relationship with Indian country,? Koopman
said. ?But Quakers were colonizers under Charles II?s Doctrine of
Discovery when William Penn came here. We have been a people who
have been of good intention and not always of such good works.?

But there is a growing understanding of the history and its
ramifications, Koopman said.

?Our Committee understands now a history that none of us ever fully
appreciated and we understand that we are the beneficiaries of a
very unjust policy.?

Koopman, who has lived in Maine and now lives near Philadelphia,
said she has discussed these issues with and read the writings of
Steven Newcomb, indigenous law research coordinator in the education
department of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, Indian Country
Today columnist, and author of ?Pagans in the Promised Land:
Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery.? She also has had
lengthy conversations with her longtime friends Wayne Newell, a
Passamaquoddy elder and teacher, and John Dieffenbacker Krall, the
executive director of the Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission.

It was Dieffenbacker- Krall who started what has become a movement to
have predominantly non-Catholic Christian churches renounce the
Doctrine of Discovery. He spearheaded the effort that led Maine?s
Episcopal Church to pass a resolution in 2007, calling on Queen
Elizabeth and the Archbishop of Canterbury to rescind the 1496
charter given to John Cabot and his sons to go forth and claim
possession of all the lands in the ?New World? that weren?t already
claimed by Spain and Portugal. That action led to a similar
resolution in New York state and ultimately to the national
resolution last summer.

A movement to persuade the Catholic Church to repeal the papal bulls
has been in the works for years.

Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation
<http://www.onondaga nation.org/> (Haudenosaunee) , co-signed a letter
in 2005 urging Pope Benedict XVI, to revoke the papal bulls. There
has been no response from the Vatican.

Koopman was surprised to receive a phone call from Lyons, whom she
has never met, in early December before he, Newcomb and others in
the indigenous community were leaving for the Parliament of the
World?s Religions meeting in Melbourne, Australia, Dec. 3 ? 9.

?We had a long conversation and I sent him a copy of the materials
and, meanwhile, people are taking (the Minute) to other monthly
meetings and we?re hoping it will get to the Yearly Meetings in the
different areas,? Koopman said.

The circle is definitely widening, Koopman agreed.

?A lot of people are coming to this light. I think something?s
happening and I feel it?s going to be good if we let these moments
be beginnings and not endings. You can?t say, ?I?m sorry, now it?s
over.? It has to be a beginning: ?I know this now, I embrace this
now and I will use this to move forward in better ways.??

*Haudenosaunee delegation advocates Doctrine disavowal*

A delegation of Haudenosaunee people at the Parliament of World
Religions <http://www.parliame ntofreligions. org/> in Melbourne,
Australia, plans to persuade the meeting to pass a resolution
repudiating the Christian Doctrine of Discovery ? and they have
received help from Maine.

The Rev. Dr. Richard Tardiff, co-chairman of the Committee on Indian
Relationships of the Episcopal Diocese of Maine, wrote to Oren
Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Onondaga Nation, Nov. 30 offering the
committee?s support for the delegation?s efforts.

The Episcopal Church passed a resolution, called Repudiate the
Doctrine of Discovery at the church?s 76th General Convention July 8
? 17 in Anaheim. But the movement was spearheaded by John
Dieffenbacker- Krall, a member of the Committee headed by Tardiff and
the executive director of the Maine Indian Tribal State Commission.

Writing to Lyons as the leader of the delegation, Tardiff said, ?I
understand that the Haudenosaunee delegation intends to ask the
people gathered at the event to pass a resolution similar to the
Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery resolution adopted by the
Episcopal Church. On behalf of the Committee on Indian Relations, an
officially sanctioned group operating within the Episcopal Diocese
of Maine, I offer my wholehearted support of your effort to expand
international awareness of the evil Christian Doctrine of Discovery.?

The Doctrine, which espouses the inherent superiority of one
religion ? Christianity ? over all other religions, is antithetical
to the Council for a Parliament of World Religions? mission, Tardiff
wrote.

?Not only has the Doctrine of Discovery resulted in religion
conflict, but it has also served as the underpinning of
international law justifying the taking of indigenous lands and
property across the world,? he wrote.

The Parliament of the World?s Religions is an interfaith
organization that was formed in 1893. Since 1988, the organization
has met roughly every five years in various places around the world.
According to its Web site, the organization was created ?to
cultivate harmony among the world?s religious and spiritual
communities and foster their engagement with the world and its
guiding institutions in order to achieve a just, peaceful and
sustainable world.?

When the Indian Committee decided to sponsor the resolution, Tardiff
said, it was motivated by the belief that ?as Episcopalians we must
decisively speak out about the moral bankruptcy of the Doctrine of
Discovery and clearly state that it has no religious, ethical,
moral, legal or political legitimacy.?

He said the church has been ?astounded? by the positive
international reaction to its resolution. If the PWR adopts a
similar resolution, Tardiff anticipates an even greater response.

Among the key topics at the PWR ? the environment, poverty, building
peace with justice ? is reconciling with the world?s indigenous peoples.

?The Parliament offers the opportunity to continue with the
reconciliation process that the Australian government began by
apologizing to indigenous people for the wrongs committed against
them. Using this Australian context, the Parliament will provide an
opportunity for indigenous peoples around the world to voice their
own concerns and aspirations, ? according to the Web site.

In addition to Lyons, the delegation to the Dec. 3 ? 9 event
included Tonya Gonnella Frichner, Esq., Onondaga Nation, the North
American Representative to the United Nations Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues and president and founder of the American Indian
Law Alliance; Steven Newcomb, Shawnee Lenape, the indigenous law
research coordinator in the education department of the Sycuan Band
of the Kumeyaay Nation, the author of ?Pagans in the Promised Land:
Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery,? and Indian Country
Today columnist; Jake Swamp, a former chief of the Akwesasne Mohawk
Nation and a renowned educator and leader; Joanne Shenandoah, Oneida
Indian Nation, award-winning singer-songwriter; Doug
George-Kanentiio, Akwesasne Mohawk, an editor, columnist and author;
scholars Philip Arnold and Mary McDonald.

Major speakers scheduled to appear at the Parliament included His
Holiness the Dalai Lama and President Jimmy Carter.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv vvvvvvvvvvv

Carrie Basgall

American Indian College Fund

8333 Greenwood Blvd.

Denver, CO 80221

P: 303.426.8900; F: 303.426.1200

www.collegefund. org <http://www.collegef und.org>

/Educating the Mind & Spirit/

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Why the Pope is Not Sorry: It's Time to End the Lie
by Rev. Kevin D. Annett
www.hiddenfromhistory.org


"You are from your father, the Devil. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he acts according to his nature, for he is a liar and the Father of lies."
Jesus, quoted in John 8:44

"Look boys, if we're going to worship a poor, humble man, we're going to need a rich, hierarchical institution to do it with!"
Monty Python's "Vice Pope Eric"

The lie playing itself out this week in Rome is hardly new, or surprising. By the standards of the Vatican, it is actually a relatively obvious untruth. But for Pope Joseph Ratzinger to pose as someone who is sorry for what his church did to aboriginal people in Canada is about as sincere as the proclamations of his cash-strapped papal predecessors who ruled that it was a sin to believe that Jesus was a poor man - or, that one could buy one's way into salvation with enough payouts to the church.

Expediency should never be confused with the truth.

Like a little boy caught with a rock in his hand, Pope Joseph is in serious trouble, now that Canada has had to admit that thousands of native kids died at the hands of the Catholic church, which established and ran most of the Indian residential schools. But to make things worse, Joe himself is personally implicated in the whole mess, since in writing he ordered Bishops and priests to suppress evidence of the violence done against not only native children, but any victim of priestly sexual assault, on pain of excommunication.

Covering up a crime is itself a crime, under any law, and Joe knows it. And so does the Oregon circuit court judge who ruled recently that survivors of any assault by a Catholic priest could sue the Vatican itself for damages.

International human rights lawyers have tried serving papers on Pope Joe a few times, and extraditing him into American courts because of his complicity in the silencing of church victims while he was a cardinal. But the Canadian residential school crimes are a lot more serious, now that mass graves have been identified. The Vatican has to quickly quell the threat of a War Crimes Tribunal summoning Pope Joe to answer questions, relying on the standard legal panacea known as "the apology".

Let's get clear about this word, and its corollary term so bandied about by guilty parties, "reconciliation" . Neither an apology nor a "reconciliation" has anything to do with being regretful or truly sorry, or with actually admitting that one has done something wrong. An "apologetic" means to defend and justify some act. Both words are about avoiding responsibility for a violent crime through a process of public and legal indemnification, whereby victims absolve the perpetrator and shield them from any consequences.

Put simply, if you're wealthy enough, you can get away with any crime, with the right words. And the Catholic church, as the oldest, wealthiest, and most systematic murderer on the planet, is a master of constructing words, which is the one and only skill required by the Lie.

Backtrack in time to the high middle ages, when the Vatican launched its crusades against "Saracens and pagans" abroad, and dissident Christians at home. A legal system was needed to justify the church's slaughter and conquest of all those Others, whether in the middle east or on distant continents. Papal lawyers came up with something called an Indulgence, a brilliant device which made it a virtue to loot, rape and murder, if these acts were done in the name of the church.

In 1095, Pope Urban II declared that Christian crusaders were absolved from any consequences for crimes they may commit in the upcoming war against Muslims, and indeed were spiritually elevated by waging such a war. The violence of the church became a virtue, under canon law.

By implication, those "unbelievers" damaged by the Crusaders had no basis to claim that wrong was done to them, since they were the cause of the war, and in fact the "unbelievers" had to make restitution to the church for having caused the violence done against them!

That act of restitution was termed a Reconciliation.

During the Spanish Inquisition, for example, Catholics who had "lapsed" and become Lutherans were "reconciled through loss of property and compelled to endure prison terms". In 1612, five citizens of Madrid were "subjected to reconciliation for Judaism and committed to the galleys as slaves". And the same fate awaited American Indians. In 1690, the Bishop of Oaxaca in Mexico "discovered organized idolatry in eleven pueblos of Indians, and held an auto (inquisition) in which the culprits were reconciled and penanced, twenty of them being condemned to perpetual prison ...". (1)

To quote the medieval historian Henry Charles Lea,

"Reconciliation to the Church entailed confiscation and was usually accompanied with other penalties according to the record of the culprit and the readiness with which he confessed and recanted. There might be prison, public humiliation, scourging or the galleys." (2)

This concept of blaming a victim for their suffering at the hands of the church, and of expecting any critic or opponent of the church to do penance on the latter's terms, is based on a basic Biblical and Roman notion that the mighty are always right, and the conquered must make amends to the conqueror.

The core paradigm of European Christendom, and culture, is in fact the belief that mankind fell away from God in rebellion, and to win salvation must be reconquered by and "reconciled" to God (and, by implication, to the church) through penance and submission. The rebel thereby indemnifies the conqueror by acknowledging that the violence done by him was right and justified, freeing him from responsibility, and in effect stating to the world that there was no crime committed, except by the conquered rebel.

The Romans used this ritual re-submission of a conquered chieftain in their public religious ceremonies, prior to executing the chieftain by strangulation. And as the heir to the Roman Empire, the Catholic church incorporated this practice into its treatment of any enemy it conquered, including dissident Christians, aboriginal people or Muslims.

That practice, quite naturally, continues to the present day, albeit in a more secularized version. We have witnessed it played out in the residential schools drama in Canada, in which the church, Catholic and Protestant, has been publicly vindicated for any wrongdoing by the re-submission of its victims, in this case the aboriginal survivors of the schools.

After undergoing public humiliation, through recounting their tortures and receiving an insultingly minimal "compensation" in return for their promised silence, native survivors have freed the perpetrators of any liability by declaring that the churches are in fact not guilty of any crime, through their waiving of any legal action against the churches.

The fact that every Canadian Prime Minister since 1968, save one, has been a Catholic, has certainly helped the Vatican force the re-submission and "reconciliation" of its aboriginal victims, and avoid responsibility for mass murder. As a fundamentalist Protestant, Prime Minister Steven Harper perhaps felt freer to name the crime of the Vatican by finally responding to the evidence of genocide and the cries of the survivors, and opening the whole residential school can of worms in April of 2007.

But the essential point is that Pope Joseph's upcoming "apology" to residential school survivors is not an admission of wrongdoing on the part of the church, or even an expression of regret: a fact indicated by the manner in which native chiefs from Canada will be "received in audience" with the Pope, in exactly the same way that the Roman Emperor accepted the supplication of conquered chieftains at his palace - on his terms, and his alone. The chiefs will stand before the Emperor, again, to state that the latter is not guilty, and to seek readmission to the fold.

There is no other explanation to the fact that, as part of his "apology", the Pope will not be forced to revoke Papal laws authorizing the genocidal conquest of native people, nor disclose the buried location of residential school children, nor surrender those responsible for their deaths.

If Joseph Ratzinger was actually "apologizing" in the sense that most of us understand the word, he would travel to the victims, not they to him, and beg their forgiveness. He would disclose the truth, open the secret archives, and give his victims a proper burial. And he would stop instructing his priests and Bishops to hide the evidence of violence still being done against children in the Catholic church.

The fact that Joseph Ratzinger will be doing none of these things this week, but rather issuing words that will protect his church and himself from any hint of wrongdoing and from any legal liability for the death of tens of thousands of little children, indicates exactly who is in charge of this latest spectacle.

The Father of Lies, indeed.

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Kevin Annett is a community minister and educator in Vancouver, Canada who works with aboriginal survivors of Christian residential schools. He is the author of two books on genocide in Canada, and is the co-producer of the award-winning documentary film on Canadian Indian residential schools, UNREPENTANT.

Kevin D. Annett
260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, B.C. Canada V9R 2H8
ph: 250-753-3345 or 1-888-265-1007
email: hiddenfromhistory@ yahoo.ca

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Post-script:
Some Modest Proposals
to Undo a Legacy of Religious Genocide in Canada


1. Annul the charitable tax-exempt status of the Roman Catholic church in Canada, and tax this church for all back payments owed to the people and indigenous nations of Canada for stolen lands, resources and lives.

2. End diplomatic recognition of the Vatican and expel the Papl Nuncio from Canada.

3. Issue a summons to Pope Joseph Ratzinger to appear before a War Crimes Tribunal convened on sovereign indigenous land, and answer charges of his complicity in crimes against humanity, specifically the deaths of more than 50,000 children in Indian Residential Schools across Canada.

For more information see: www.hiddenfromhistory.org


Footnotes

1. The Inquisition of the Spanish Dependencies by Henry Charles Lea (New York, 1908), pp. 97, 211 (FN 3), 421. My emphasis.

2. Ibid., p. 421