Page 17 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 15

In January 1891,
Re-Education the bodies
of four Lakota Sioux are seen
wrapped in blankets, three weeks
after the Dec. 29 massacre by U.S.
forces at Wounded Knee River on
the Pine Ridge reservation in South
Dakota. (Library of Congress)

Editor’s note: It may seem
like papal statements from
500 years ago are ancient
history. But Native Amer-
ican activists and scholars
insist that Catholicism’s
past continues to affect the
present. Papal bulls from the
1400s condoned the conquest
of the Americas and other
lands inhabited by indigenous
people. The papal documents
led to an international norm
called the Doctrine of Dis-
covery, which dehumanized
non-Christians and legiti-
mized their suppression by
nations around the world, in-
DISASTROUS DOCTRINE cluding by the United States.
Now Native Americans say
HAD PAPAL ROOTS the church helped commit
genocide and refuses to come
by Vinnie Rotondaro to terms with it. This is Part
Five of a six-part series on
This article is republished by permission of NCR Publishing Company www.ncronline.org the legacy of the Doctrine of
Discovery.

his article appears in the tion over the Guanches people” and In 1454, another bull titled Roma-
The Trail of History the Canary Islands, which was taken nus Pontifex furthered that thinking,
feature series. View the over by the crown of Castile, a me- sanctifying the seizure of non-Chris-
Tfull series. dieval state in the Iberian Peninsula. tian lands in parts of Africa and
Scholars say the Doctrine of Dis- The bull marked the first time the restating the legitimacy of enslaving
covery holds immense importance papacy “made it look as though no non-Christian people.
in world history. They say it resulted one was living there,” or had any
in disaster and genocide for native ownership over the land being pur- In 1493, after Christopher Colum-
peoples, but that its legacy remains sued by European powers, “because bus’ fateful voyage, Inter Caetera
largely overlooked. there were no Christians there,” granted Ferdinand and Isabella
Newcomb said. “full and free power, authority, and
According to Steven Newcomb, a jurisdiction of every kind,” over
columnist for Indian Country Today That “pattern of thought” then almost all of the Americas, save for
and co-founder of the Indigenous began marching through history. a portion of modern-day Brazil and
Law Institute, what became known a few island outposts.
as the Doctrine of Discovery In 1452, the papal bull Dum Di-
originated from a series of papal versas instructed the Portuguese More bulls followed, said Newcomb,
bulls issued in the era following the crown “to invade, capture, vanquish, author of the book Pagans in the
Crusades. and subdue all Saracens, pagans, Promised Land: Decoding the Doc-
The first bull of consequence was and other enemies of Christ, to put trine of Christian Discovery. Each
issued in 1436 and titled Romanus them into perpetual slavery, and to bull incorporated language from
Pontifex, he said. It concerned “the take away all their possessions and preceding bulls, he said, forming
concession of the right of domina- property.” a mosaic of papal license that was

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