DAY 6: Give up being ignorant of the history of colonisation
The spiritual, legal and moral justification for the Colonisation of North America originates in The Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1493, which were decrees or announcements of a law under the official authority of the Roman Catholic Pope. These decrees supported the genocide and enslavement of non-Christians by granting rights to Christina, i.e. European sovereigns. The Papal Bull of 1455 specifically granted Christian sovereigns the right to: “invade, search out, capture, vanquish “non-Christians” and “their land and resources” and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery” .
This, along with the 1493 Papal Bull that granted European kings and queens sovereignty over any lands discovered that were not already under the sovereignty of Christians, form the “Doctrine of Discovery”. The Doctrine of Discovery was first articulated in US law in 1823 in Johnson vs M’Intosh. It has been used as recently as 2014 to deny Indigenous sovereignty over land in Canada and the United States.
Despite the British Proclamation of 1763, which was intended to end the war between settlers and Indigenous peoples by creating a western boundary to settler expansion, and the subsequent treaties negotiated under this Proclamation, settlers continued to expand all the way to the Pacific ocean, breaking treaties and displacing millions of Indigenous peoples from their territories illegally. The inherently racist justification for these atrocities are rarely acknowledged. The fact that they continue to influence legal decisions is alarming.
The colonial mindset is evident in white settler culture, which is dominant in both Canada and the US. The way we govern, make decisions, decide which acts are legal and which are illegal, decide and who to defend and protect with military force are all informed by colonisation. Imagine the many assumptions and ideologies that dictate our current society. Sit quietly for 5 minutes and imagine how things could be different.
Advancing reconciliation requires bringing Canadian law and policy into line with international human rights law, which has condemned doctrines of superiority, including discovery and terra nullius, as colonial and racist. Yet the racist assumptions and impacts of these doctrines live on in aspects of Canadian and US law and policy. They are evident in underlying assumptions that First Nations are “claimants” in our own lands and that treat First Nations as somehow lacking sovereignty. The assumptions and impacts of these racist doctrines must be uprooted. The path forward will require Canada to acknowledge the truth of our pre-existing and continuing sovereignty as self-determining peoples (National Chief Perry Bellegarde).
TIP: Think about an area of law that you benefit from such property rights, criminal law or corporate law. Knowing that these laws have the Doctrine of Discovery as a foundation, how do you feel about benefiting from them? Imagine how you might contribute to real reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples knowing this? Look into the Land Back Movement and find a way to support it.
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