Indigenous groups argued that European explorers used the principle of discovery — based on the assumed superiority of European Christians — to legally and morally justify the conquest and exploitation of indigenous communities, and to rule over them.
The Vatican statement also acknowledged that acts of violence had been committed against indigenous communities by colonial settlers, and asked for forgiveness for the “terrible effects of assimilation policies and the pain” they had experienced. . The doctrine of discovery has previously been rejected by some community of faith in the United States and Canada.
Canadian Minister for Justice David Lametti acknowledged the Vatican declaration on the efforts of indigenous communities. “A doctrine that should not exist. This is another step forward,” he said in a tweet.
The latest move follows the reconciliation Pope Francis sought in Canada during his visit last year, when he apologized for the role Christians have played in the tragic history of its residential school systems, many of which was governed by the Catholic Church in the 19th and 20th. centuries.
Indigenous children in Canada were forcibly removed from their families to integrate them into a Euro-Christian society, where they had to renounce their language and culture; many were sexually abused. Thousands of children died in these schools and their unmarked graves continue to be discovered.
During his trip last year, Francis came face to face protesters holding banners calling on him to withdraw the doctrine of discovery.
This week’s announcement was welcomed by Indigenous advocates. The news is “fantastic,” Phil Fontaine, a former national leader of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada, told the Associated Press.
“The church did something, as it said it would, for the Holy Father,” said Fontaine, who was part of the First Nations delegation that met with Francis. “Now the ball is in the courts of the governments, in the United States and in Canada, but particularly in the United States where the doctrine is embedded in law.”
At a landmark 1823 case, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall invoked the doctrine of papal discovery to rule that Native peoples only had rights to live and not to own. This jurisprudence on Native American lands has persisted over the years and was defined in 2005.
A court in New York, in the case of City of Sherrill vs. Oneida Nation, rely on the courts’ prior acceptance of the discovery doctrine. Those decisions concluded that land titles were granted to European colonists, and eventually, the US government.
In recent years, the movement to reclaim Native American lands in the United States has grown. In January 2022, 523 acres of redwood forest in Mendocino County, Calif., were transferred to InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council and, in April, the Rappahannock Tribe regained 460 acres of ancestral land in Virginia after 350 years.
Most Native American lands are trust lands, the US government says — lands to which title is held by the federal government but beneficial interests are vested in tribes.
The The United Nations said in 2012 that international law requires governments correct the mistakes caused by such colonial doctrines, “including the violation of indigenous land rights, through law and policy reform.”
