On the eve of Columbus Day, when some Americans will remember the Italian explorer kindly and others won’t, the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon is calling attention to the Doctrine of Discovery, the philosophy that fueled European claims to the riches of the New World without regard for the indigenous people who already lived there.
At its 2009 General Convention, the Episcopal Church voted overwhelmingly to repudiate the doctrine and called for its elimination from “contemporary policies, programs and structures.” In Portland, the Rev. Albert Krueger, First Nations missioner and vicar of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in North Portland, is organizing a gathering Sunday so people can learn more about the doctrine and its implications globally and here in Oregon.
Under this logic, if TEC were to win the lawsuits in Virginia it would have to turn the property over to the First Nations people from whom it was stolen. And then pay the going market rate for all that Manhattan real estate owned by Trinity Wall Street (less, of course, the $6 originally paid for Trinity’s portion of the island).
Hey, maybe we can all unite in Mission and Ministry under our common beliefs concerning the Doctrine of Discovery!
Seriously, you could not make this stuff up. If I were to try to *create* a ridiculous, fictional “look at this Shiny Red Ball over here” moment, I couldn’t do something this extreme. And if I did I’d be accused of just being some extreme novelist.
It’s like a scene out of Monty Python.
My mother’s side of the family have been supporters of the Native Americans since some of our ancestors, as members of the King’s Loyal Rangers, fought along-side the Mohawks from the Mohawk valley during the American revolution. They later re-settled in Canada along-side them in the Desoronto-Nappanee, Ontario area.
Having said all of that, I also feel that I have to say that there is a “natural statute of limitations’ on what an indigenous group can claim after being absent from its original native lands for a number of generations.
The Iroquois were not the original occupants of Upstate New York nor were most other Native American groups that once occupied lands that were previously occupied by other/earlier Native Americans.
And this concept of a ‘natural statute of limitations’ applies to the rest of the Americas and to Europe, Asia, and Africa.
Where do we start and where do we stop? I for one would like to see all non-Gaelic influences driven from the formerly Gaelic-speaking areas of Scotland, but that’s not going to happen. And the Highland Clearances/Gaelic clearances only began in earnest about three to four hundred years ago. About the same time that Europeans began to seriously settle North America.
Of course Gaelic speakers had earlier started displacing Picts and speakers of other Celtic tongues in what is modern Scotland about seventeen hundred years ago.
And what about the Anglo-Saxons of England who were so rudely conquered AND COLONIZED by the Normans following the Battle of Hastings in 1066?
Where do we start and where do we end with all of this?
This seems like so much like liberal mass “guilt”. We, the people living here now, had nothing to do with this doctrine. Repudiating it seems like a stunt to say “mia culpa”, so that I can feel better about me. The same type argument has been used about slavery. I have been told many times that “your people” did this or that to us. When I explain that “my people” didn’t immigrate to the US until 1924 and that I had nothing to do with slavery, I get a look of accusation anyway. Can’t time, effort, and money be better spent doing something that has real and lasting value to the native american people?
I’m still waiting for Washington to pony up for all the property seized from my Loyalist ancestors who were forced to flee to Canada after the American Revolution! And the Cajuns are still waiting for Ottawa to pay up for the loss of their lands in eastern Canada (though that land is far less valuable now than my ancestral lands in Queens and Westchester counties in New York).
This comes up for discussion in Maine every couple of years, and for many of the Maine Indians it’s not a laughing matter. The Maine Indians are still getting a raw deal all around, and there seems to be no persuading them that this alleged “doctrine” is not germane to their present problems, except as a way of scoring some kind of symbolic point.
It’s a stretch to say anyone today recognizes this as a “doctrine.” But for what it’s worth, I find it refreshing that for a change this author didn’t call it the “Christian doctrine of discovery.” Once upon a time it was considered a legal doctrine, first enunciated by an English king. If it were a Christian doctrine, we’d be making sure new Christians understood and believed it.
A few years ago Maine’s diocesan Convention adopted a resolution directing the Bishop of Maine to appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury to instruct the Queen of England to revoke this doctrine. (“The Queen asked the Dairymaid…”) Or something like that.
B’shalom,
Chuck Bradshaw
Hulls Cove, Maine
“…when popes granted European monarchs and explorers the right to capture, vanquish or enslave non-Christians and seize their property.â€
Anyone who has actually read the documents or who knows the history of the Popes’ statements on slavery will know this is an out and out lie. Yes the doctrine was abused but not because it granted the right to enslave non Christians. From Inter Caetera:
“Hence, heartily commending in the Lord this your holy and praiseworthy purpose, and desirous that it be duly accomplished, and that the name of our Savior be carried into those regions, we exhort you very earnestly in the Lord and by your reception of holy baptism, whereby you are bound to our apostolic commands, and by the bowels of the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, enjoin strictly, that inasmuch as with eager zeal for the true faith you design to equip and despatch this expedition, you purpose also, as is your duty, to lead the peoples dwelling in those islands and countries to embrace the Christian religion; …”
You can read “Inter Caetera†in full very readily online. The encyclical “Sublimus Dei ” by Pope Paul III directly addresses the issue of the enslavement of the Native population and state in part:
“We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.â€
I know this is off topic, but Pastorchurckie, are you an active pastor in Maine? If so, where is your parish. As a fellow Mainiac, I should like to know. Larry
#8 Larry:
Yes, I’m rector of Church of Our Father in Hulls Cove, Mt. Desert Island. I surmise that you’re in the County(?).
Pax,
Chuck
Be careful what you repudiate, your American real estate deed depends on this ‘doctrine’. Here’s what the 19th century supreme court had to say on the matter:
Mr. Chief Justice MARSHALL [an Episcopalian] delivered the opinion of the Court.
. . . As the right of society, to prescribe those rules by which property may be acquired and preserved is not, and cannot be drawn into question; . . . it will be necessary, in pursuing this inquiry, to examine, not singly those principles of abstract justice, which the Creator of all things has impressed on the mind of his creature man . . .
On the discovery of this immense continent, the great nations of Europe were eager to appropriate to themselves so much of it as they could respectively acquire. Its vast extent offerend an ample field to the ambition and enterprise of all; and the character and religion of its inhabitants afforded an apology for considering them as a people over whom the superior genius of Europe might claim an ascendency. The potentates of the old world found no difficulty in convincing themselves that they made ample compensation to the inhabitants of the new, by bestowing on them civilization and Christianity, in exchange for unlimited independence. . . .
http://thorpe.ou.edu/treatises/cases/Johnson.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnson_v._M'Intosh
Peace,
-ms
(Apologies elves) No as a matter of fact I live in Kennebec county, but thanks anyway. I wouldn’t MIND being from the county. Love the soil, the trout and the people, but it’s too cold for the fruit I grow. Maybe i will get a chance to visit your church one day. I’d like that. Larry