by the Reverend Dr. Bradley S. Hauff, Oglala Sioux, and
the Reverend Dr. Mary Crist, Blackfeet Nation
Since 1934 Columbus Day has been celebrated throughout the United States. In 1970 Congress designated the second Monday in October as the date. It is a federal holiday as well as one that is recognized in many states and local municipalities. Regions with a large percentage of residents of Italian descent, in particular, typically hold parades and public gatherings commemorating Christopher Columbus and his voyages to the Western Hemisphere, most notably the one in 1492 that was funded by Spain, during which he is said to have “discovered” America and the Indigenous inhabitants of the “New World.” Recently the practice of celebrating Columbus Day has undergone scrutiny and opposition by numerous of groups, however, and for good reason.
What is Columbus Day about, fundamentally? While it is commonly seen as a day to honor Italian Americans and their contributions to our country (which, in and of itself, is an appropriate and honorable thing to do in my opinion), at its core is a narrative that extols the Doctrine of Discovery and its devastating effects on the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere, millions of Indigenous people from hundreds of tribes who had been living in organized societies for at least 30,000 years, according to anthropologists. It is a narrative teaching that none of this existed until it was “discovered” by those who believed they were given the right, by God, to capture and dominate the people and the land. It is a narrative teaching that the humanity of the Indigenous people, which was initially questioned, was ultimately determined by Europeans, only so their human souls could undergo indoctrination into the Christian faith. It is a narrative teaching that these Indigenous people were heathens and that God was an absentee landlord of the Western Hemisphere until 1492.
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VERY FEW PEOPLE IN AMERICA HAVE EVEN HEARD OF IT (THE DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY), AND EVEN FEWER CAN EXPLAIN WHAT IT IS…. THE DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY IS THEREFORE AN UNHOLY UNION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE GRANTING TO EUROPEAN NATIONS THE DIVINE RIGHT TO TAKE LAND AND SUBJUGATE PEOPLE
While the Doctrine of Discovery shaped the approach of European nations and the Christian Church to Africa and the Western Hemisphere, very few people in America have even heard of it, and even fewer can explain what it is. It is hardly ever taught in history courses, particularly in the public schools, and hasn’t been written about widely until recently. I believe there are two reasons for this. First, there is no single document known as “The Doctrine of Discovery” as there is with the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The doctrine is comprised of the philosophies expressed in three papal decrees: Dum Diversas (Pope Nicholas V, 1452), Romanus Pontifex (Pope Nicholas V, 1455), and Inter Caetera (Pope Alexander VI, 1493). In Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex the pope gave the monarchs of Portugal and Spain the spiritual authority to capture and control any territories and subjugate any people discovered in Africa as long as the people and lands were not already under the authority of a Christian nation. These decrees undoubtedly influenced the Spanish monarch in commissioning the voyage of Columbus. In Inter Caetera, issued after the Columbus “discovery,” the pope extended this authority to the Western Hemisphere and its Indigenous peoples. The Doctrine of Discovery is therefore an unholy union between church and state granting to European nations the divine right to take land and subjugate people, setting the foundations for African slavery and the genocide of Indigenous people. Furthermore, the discovery doctrine spread to England in 1496, when King Henry VII granted to John Cabot and his men the authority to investigate, claim and possess any lands and riches discovered in the New World for the English crown, provided they were not previously claimed by another Christian nation. I believe these stunning revelations are the second reason that the doctrine hasn’t been widely taught. It exposes European nations, and the Christian Church, as greedy entities motivated by power and wealth rather than the Gospel and human freedom. It looks bad, and it is.
Americans cannot blame Europe and the pope for this by any means. In the late 1700s, Thomas Jefferson, who referred to Indigenous people in the Declaration of Independence as “merciless Indian savages” who were to be exempt from the basic rights granted by God to humankind, was influenced by the discovery philosophy and found it to be central to the new narrative of America. In 1823, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in Johnson v McIntosh that Indigenous people have no right to their land. In his ruling he cited King Henry VII’s patent to John Cabot as a justification. And while Marshall effectively reversed his decision nearly ten years later in Worcester v Georgia, his ruling was ignored by President Andrew Jackson, and the Trail of Tears followed. In the late 19thcentury the influence of the Doctrine of Discovery became clearly evident in its American interpretation that came to be known as Manifest Destiny, the God-given right for Europeans to seize control of America from its original Indigenous inhabitants. Additionally, the figure of Columbia (a feminine name associated with Columbus) became recognized as the mythological personification of America and was depicted in numerous works of art at the time, such as John Gast’s American Progress and the iconic Statue of Liberty.
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AMERICANS NEED TO COME TO TERMS WITH THEIR HISTORY AND HOW IT COMPARES TO THE MYTHOLOGICAL NARRATIVE. TO DO THIS WE NEED TO CONSIDER AND TAKE SERIOUSLY THE INTERPRETATIONS OF PAST EVENTS FROM ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES.
Since the 1980s, as Americans have come to terms with the painful events of our country’s past, there have been calls for the discontinuation of Columbus Day as a national holiday and the replacement of it with Native American Day or Indigenous Peoples Day. As a Native person (Oglala Sioux, Lakota) I prefer the term Indigenous as it is a more universal term and does not include the word America which many of us associate with colonization. Americans need to come to terms with their history and how it compares to the mythological narrative. To do this we need to consider and take seriously the interpretations of past events from alternative perspectives. Abandoning the Columbus Discovery narrative is central to this. Replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day allows for the acknowledgement of Indigenous people in this country and what happened with us. It allows for truth telling. It promotes an honest examination of our past. It dispels the myth and the atrocity of white dominance. It tells Indigenous people that we are not relics of the past, that we are very much still here, and we are a significant part of the American story. The Church should be a central part of making this transition happen. By doing so the Church will help correct the mistakes of the past that it created in the first place and liberate the Gospel from narratives based in greed and hate.
The Episcopal Church repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery in 2009, and most mainline Christian denominations have also done so since then. But there is much more to be done. It’s taken us over 400 years to get to this point, and substantive change is still far off. There are many in the United States who love the mythological narrative of America and don’t want it criticized or changed. So this will not be an easy thing to do and we can expect visceral opposition. But it is simply not enough to say that we did something in the past that was wrong. We need to do what we can to make up for it, to the extent that it is possible to do so. Rejecting the Columbus Discovery and the day that celebrates it will go a long way in starting this process. It will force our country to stop living a lie.
The Boarding School Movement
“A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” Captain Richard H. Pratt, 1892
As an effect of the Doctrine of Discovery, the federal government attempted to “Americanize” Native Americans beginning in 1887. By 1900 thousands of Native Americans had been forcibly removed from their homes and sent away to study at almost 150 boarding schools around the United States. The U.S. Training and Industrial School founded in 1879 at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, was the model for most of these schools. Boarding schools like Carlisle provided vocational and manual training and sought to systematically strip away tribal culture. Students were made to drop their Indian names, punished if they spoke their Native languages, and stripped of their long hair. Parents were not allowed to visit their children and they were often not told where the children were living. The families and the youth resisted this treatment, but the efforts were ignored by Carlisle founder, Captain Richard H. Pratt. Under his leadership Indigenous youth were brutalized in the attempts made by teachers to “civilize” them.
The video “Native Voices Speaking to the Church and the World,” was produced by the Office of the Indigenous Ministries for The Episcopal Church. It features numerous Indigenous Episcopalians telling the story of how the Doctrine of Discovery affected, and still affects, their lives in tragic and lasting ways.
Exploring the Doctrine of Discovery
A course by By Mary Crist
Everyone is welcome in this course. Through your journey in a multi-media web quest, you will find out the thinking behind the Doctrine of Discovery, how it was justified by Christian church leaders, what happened to the people it touched, how it continues to affect Indigenous people worldwide today, and what hope there is for Indigenous people in the future. You will hear Indigenous voices again and again, something that is unusual in Doctrine of Discovery courses. You will learn how the connection with the land and with Creator has given Indigenous people the spiritual resilience we have today as survivors of the Doctrine of Discovery.
