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BEAR BUTTE —
Tribal leaders and indigenous rights groups will ask the pope to
rescind a 1493 Vatican document which they believe paved the legal
road for Europeans to take land from indigenous American people.
Twenty-three
organizations and 100 individuals signed a resolution Thursday at the
Summit of Indigenous Nations at Bear Butte. The resolution, which
will be sent to the Vatican for review, targets the Papal Bull Inter
Caetera of 1493, in which Vatican officials urged Christopher
Columbus to convert indigenous Americans to Catholicism.
“We command
you in virtue of holy obedience that, employing all due diligence in
the premises, &ldots; you should appoint to the aforesaid mainlands
and islands worthy, God-fearing, learned, skilled and experienced
men, in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents in
the Catholic faith and train them in good morals,” reads the
1493 document.
“This is
going to be history in the making,” Vic Camp announced before
the resolution and a separate treaty amongst summit participants were signed.
The resolution
equally targets the Queen of England and asks her to rescind a 1496
Royal Charter.
“It is with
much honor that I put my hand on this instrument,” Dennis Banks
of the American Indian Movement said as he signed the resolution.
“It’s at least part of a solution. It’s step one ...
to pass this moment on to the next generation so they bear witness
and we begin a new day.”
Oglala traditional
chief Oliver Red Cloud was the first to sign Thursday afternoon,
followed by Floyd Hand, an Oglala elder and treaty delegate, and then
the various indigenous entities.
Debra White Plume
of Bring Back the Way, one of the summit organizers, said she
experienced trauma attending Catholic boarding schools.
“I’m
really proud to see (everyone) stand up against the people that said
we weren’t human,” White Plume said. “We want our
spiritual identity left alone.”
The resolution
states that the 1493 Vatican document and the 1496 Royal Charter
“represent principles of religious intolerance in its moral and
legal implications” and served as a “doctrine of
discovery,” a legal foundation for the “extinguishment of
aboriginal title to Indian lands in the United States.”
“The doctrine
of discovery established a legal paradigm that has caused crusades in
the name of Christianity and great harm and injury to Indigenous
Peoples throughout the centuries, including the members of Indigenous
Nations gathered at this Summit,” reads a section of the resolution.
In addition, the
Mato Paha Treaty of 2006 was signed Thursday. That document will be
forwarded to the United Nations. It recognizes a union among the
Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council, the Northern Arapaho Nation,
the Northern Cheyenne Nation, the Ponca Nation and the Confederation
of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador.
Through this
treaty, the five entities established peaceful relations among
themselves “to maintain an effective and lasting peace” and
other goodwill stances, including trade, support and defense.
According to Debra
White Plume, the treaty will be sent to the United Nations in about
one month. Bring Back the Way will take the lead and send in the
treaty. However, the group “needs to package it
appropriately,” White Plume said. Attorneys will draft a cover
letter before the treaty is sent. The group expects the U.N. to keep
the document on file but expects no further action.
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