DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY RENOUNCED

From Ed Marcuse – April 4, 2023

Last week,³ under history’s first Latin American pontiff, the Vatican development and education offices renounced the Doctrine of Discovery¹.  This papal doctrine was used to justify colonization in the name of Christianity and came to be part of US and international law.

In 1863 Lincoln spoke the words: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on the continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men as created equal. Twenty-nine years earlierChief Justice John Marshall ruled that the European rights of discovery had been transferred to the United States. (Macintosh vs Johnson²). The right of discovery as defined by a Papal Edict of 1493³ stated that the barbarous nations be overthrown, their peoples subjugated and brought to the faith”.  

Many settler communities supported by the US Army not only displaced the Indians, but destroyed their crops, and sought to eradicate them and their culture. These actions and the policies that sustained them for 200 years meet the United Nations definition of genocide. Thus, the United States which began as 13 colonies transformed itself into a colonizer – a colonial power akin to Great Britain, Spain, France and Portugal.

James Baldwin wrote: “The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it…history is present in all that we do. Therefore, it is important:

–that we acknowledge that we each live and work on lands that have been inhabited  since time immemorial by the Nations and Tribes of many Native American peoples;

–that we understand that these lands sustained them for thousands of years, nurtured their diverse cultures, are the final resting places of their ancestors;

–and that we recognize that today many indigenous peoples thrive in our communities, alive and strong! 

Such a land acknowledgement is a small but important step toward revising our shared understanding of our national history.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/30/world/europe/vatican-repudiates-doctrine-of-discovery-colonization.html

2. https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-johnson-v-m-intosh

3. https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/171.html