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Topic: Christian 'Doctrine' Fueled Dehumanization  (Read 1769 times)

walksalone11

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Christian 'Doctrine' Fueled Dehumanization
« on: February 27, 2011, 06:35:03 pm »
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/valerie-taliman/christian-doctrine-fueled_b_558571.html

"A groundbreaking report examining the roots of Christian domination over indigenous peoples and their lands was released this week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

North American Representative to the Permanent Forum Tonya Gonnella Frichner, an attorney and founder of the American Indian Law Alliance, presented a preliminary study on the "Doctrine of Discovery" and its historical impacts on indigenous peoples, with a focus on how it became part of United States laws.

"The first thing indigenous peoples share is the experience of having been invaded by those who treated us without compassion because they considered us to be less than human," said Frichner, a citizen of the Onondaga Nation serving her first term on the 16-member UNPFII.

"Dehumanization leads to the second thing indigenous peoples share in common: Being treated on the basis of the belief that those who invaded our territories have a right of lordship or dominance over our existence and, therefore, have the right to take, grant, and dispose of our lands, territories, and resources without our permission or consent."

Frichner said human rights violations faced by indigenous peoples can all be traced to the Doctrine of Discovery and its interpretive framework which has been used for five centuries to take Native lands.

It has also been cited in U.S. Supreme Court land claims cases decided against Indian nations, including the 1955 ruling Tee Hit Ton Indians v. United States, and the 2005 decision in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York.

The Doctrine of Discovery was among Vatican mandates dating back to the 15th century, called papal bulls, that declared Christian monarchs had the right to claim superior title over land and territories that they "discovered."

The claimed right of "dominion" over Native peoples was based on the thinking that non-Christians were "heathens and uncivilized savages," with no, or limited rights, to land.

The Vatican's Doctrine of Discovery was based on the premise that all non-Christian land belonged to no one because no Christians were living there and no Christian monarch or lord had yet claimed dominion. Once Christian monarchies like Spain or France claimed the right of dominion, that claim was transferred to political successors over centuries.

"Indian land rights have been characterized in U.S. law as nothing more than a permissive right of occupancy or permission from the whites to occupy their own Indian lands," Frichner said.

There were theologians who did not agree that Christian discovery could give dominion over and title to non-Christian lands. The issue was debated at length in the early 1550s in Spain with no input from indigenous peoples, she said.

It was a debate among Christian Europeans about whether the Indians of the Americas were human.

"Clearly, (we) have joined the debate by declaring definitively that we are human beings. However, for more than five centuries, the doctrines of discovery and dehumanization have been institutionalized, and this is the context of the work we are doing on the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples," Frichner said.

The study focused on the history of the United States, and points out that the Doctrine of Discovery had been officially incorporated into U.S. Indian policies in the 1823 Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. M'Intosh.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall identified the royal charters of Great Britain pertaining to North America as the source of the argument that "discovery gave title" to the government by whose authority the "discovery" was made.

The royal charter issued to John Cabot in 1496 authorized Cabot and his sons to seek out "isles, countries, and regions of the heathen and infidel, which before this time have been unknown to all Christian people."

This and similar language were cited as the basis for the ruling in Johnson v. M'Intosh that the United States had the ultimate dominion over Indian peoples and lands.

Frichner said the report is a first step in investigating the global scope of the Doctrine of Discovery as a key source of violations of human rights of Native peoples.

A comprehensive study will provide the opportunity to understand that all the struggles that indigenous peoples are engaged in are rooted in "the claim by one people of a right of dominance over another."

Frichner said the discriminatory legal framework that exists today is directly tied to the Doctrine of Discovery which has resulted in the dispossession and impoverishment of indigenous peoples and unlimited resource extraction from their lands.

Kuriakose Bharanikulangara, observer for the Holy See, responded to Frichner's report by saying that the papal bulls that paved the way for European expansion had been abrogated over centuries. He insisted the Church had upheld the rights of indigenous peoples to their ancestral lands, regardless of whether the inhabitants were Christian or not."




Robspad

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Dehumanization like to me with my gift.
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2011, 07:52:58 am »
Imagine being giifted and an IQ or 143 or so. Smarter than Albert Einstien yet because your views seem outlandish to a doctor or your family and you get visions and have some mediumistic experiences they make it grounds to take your life. Yes condemn you to mental illness for being gifted. What woman wants to marry and make children with a mentally ill person? That means you cook and clean along with tryng to get enough money to survive. Don't forget to check yes where the job aplications ask "have you ever been diagnosed mentally ill?" Try to just flake off the diagnosis and go to work means if you go to college you have loans to repay and if you check to box about mental illness you just might not get hired and get bad credit from the start in life. Then if you leave out the box and get a life going on that reflects a good income then a foe finds out you were ever diagnosed and you didn't check the box. Forclosure and loose your job and credit. Certain instability and live like an animal to survive in your condemned state. Lost my family and all to the US goverment allowing doctors the power to disagree with my views and call a gift mentally ill no matter if I argued or not. That is final and I lived a life of jails and camping out in winter some place or hotel to room and board. No partner to help. Who wants all that? I loved God and chose to serve the way he asked. Suffering for the sake of proclaiming that my gift was from him and I believed it was the end and time for Messiah to come. Yeah and here's your crazy papers son. Have a nice life. ANIMAL my dignity forclosed on.

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