DISMANTLING THE DOCTRINE OF
DISCOVERY
Akimel
O’tham Nation Territory April 19-21, 2013
We
the Nations of Original Peoples issue this call to reflect and take action on
issues of critical importance to our present and future survival.
We
affirm our right to exercise our free existence as nations and peoples of this
continent and hemisphere Abya Yala,
called [America] an existence that goes back to the beginnings of time as it
has been expressed in our stories of origin. Our ancestors evolved with
profound knowledge systems and languages. The wisdom and spirituality of
our ancestors, with their profound powers of discernment and scientific
observations have contributed greatly to humanity in terms of food, medicine,
mathematics, spiritual knowledge and understanding, while serving as guardians
of vast ecological systems and pristine pure waters, which is the very source
of life. Our free and independent ancestors studied the laws of the
universe and developed our original systems of spiritual understanding and
harmonization with the natural world. Our unique legal governance systems are
and will always be deeply rooted in the Mother Earth of our lands and
traditional territories.
The
year 1492 marks the beginning of an ongoing process of crimes against our
humanity as the original peoples of Abya Yala [the Americas]. In 1492,
Cristobal Colόn (aka Christopher Columbus) was commissioned to sail to our homelands,
and arriving at the Taino island of Guanahani and he claimed to take possession
of it in the name of the Chrisitian Cross and the Castilian Crown. He did
so based on the claim by Christendom that Christian monarchs had the divine
right to discover and conquer non-Christians, and lay claim to their lands,
territories, and resources. Colόn re-named that first island San Salvador
(‘Holy Savior’), and he erected a cross and a gallows to symbolize the
intention to impose Castilian political domination and crown law upon the
original nations of our territories. This process was repeated, in mass
scale, wherever the agents of Christendom invaded the territories and
ceremonial sites of our nations, intending to dominate and dispossess us of our
lands and spirituality.
In
1493, Pope Alexander VI purported to make an Apostolic “donation” of
non-Christian lands to the crown of Castile and Leόn, for “the propagation of
the Christian Empire” (emperii christiani),
and expressed his desire that non-Christian nations (barbarae nationes) be subjugated (deprimantur) and “brought to the faith itself.” The pope’s document
said to the Crown of Castile and Leόn:
“…we of our own accord…do by tenor of these presents, should
any of said islands have been found by your envoys and captains, give, grant,
and assign to you and your heirs and successors, kings of Castile and Leon,
forever, together with all their dominions, cities, camps, places, and
villages, and all rights, jurisdictions, and appurtenances, all islands and
mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered…
and we make, appoint, and depute you and your said heirs and
successors lords of them [those lands] with full and free power, authority, and
jurisdiction of every kind; with this proviso however, that by this our gift,
grant, and assignment no right acquired by any Christian prince…is hereby to be
understood to be withdrawn or taken away.”
The
prior colonization rights of ‘any Christian prince,’ specifically the crown of
Portugal, were to be protected but not the rights of any non-Christian nations
and peoples. This decree resulted in a tradition of political, economic,
social, cultural domination and subjugation imposed against our nations and
peoples in the name of “civilization” and the “peaceful conquest” by the
Catholic missionaries, as Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits imposed
religious conversion as instrument of colonial domination.
For
three days we have gathered in the traditional territory of the O’otham Nations
to discuss the destructive, deadly and genocidal effects of the Doctrine of
Discovery on our originally free nations and peoples. We have focused on
the need to dismantle and challenge the dehumanizing ideas and the arguments
that has been typically called the Doctrine
of Discovery (also known as “the Right of Discovery”). Those ideas of
domination and subjugation are perfectly illustrated by the Papal Bull Inter
Caetera of 1493 and other such documents issued by the Holy See at the Vatican
and adopted by the Portuguese and Spanish crowns and their successors.
The
countries of England, France, Holland, and Russia also made claims to create
rights of sovereignty through symbolic acts. As a result of international
political succession, countries throughout the Western Hemisphere all trace
their political lineage back to the 1492 Prerogatives to Columbus and to the
papal bulls of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In the United
States, for example, the political formation of the states of California,
Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and Utah are traced back directly to
these same documents.
After
many presentations and much deliberation at the “Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery International Conference”,
April 19-21, we find that the Doctrine of Discovery continues its destructive
impact even after all these centuries upon our Nations of Indigenous Peoples.
We
hereby affirm that the persistent domination, subjugation, and dehumanization
of our Indigenous Peoples are a clear violation or our Human Rights. As a
means of dealing with the ongoing rights violations and instances of domination
that our peoples suffer from on a daily basis, we make this call of conscience,
and affirm our determination to form an Indigenous
Peoples’ Tribunal to monitor, acknowledge, and publicize the violations of
the rights of our nations and peoples, and to condemn the perpetrators of those
rights violations, to globally distribute educational information about the
Doctrine of Discovery and its effects, in affirmation of the original systems
of law of our nations and peoples.
We
further note that since the invasion, colonization and subsequent imposition of
colonial states, our peoples have suffered persecution, massacres and the
denial of our Human Rights of free movement as Indigenous Peoples in our own
continent. The current neo-colonization illegally imposes extractive
industries upon our territories and also then criminalizes us with colonial
borders. The religious impositions of Christendom continues to negatively
impact our ancestral practices of spirituality, going so far as to deny access
to our ceremonial centers now considered archaeological ruins to be developed
as entertainment centers of tourism.
Therefore,
we affirm that the persistent domination, subjugation and dehumanization of our
Indigenous Peoples are a clear violation of our rights.
To deal with the systematic violations of our rights and freedoms,
and the various forms of domination and domestication affecting our peoples
today and considering that the Indigenous Peoples have an imperative in terms of
safeguarding our rights and shape our destiny. Under the principle of self
determination we call to constitute a Tribunal
of Indigenous Peoples in order to show evidence the violations of our
rights and its disastrous effects that prevent a better future and similarly
condemn those responsible for human rights violations which by their nature are
acts against humanity. This Tribunal of Indigenous Peoples shall be of a global
character and serve to disseminate the historical and current situation of
Indigenous Peoples and also monitor each situation. This international
Indigenous Peoples body shall promote and inform global society towards
education about the Doctrine of Discovery and its negative effects against our
humanity.
Maya Vision
– Centro Cultural Techantit
