Steve Newcomb calls it the “Doctrine of Domination.”
The Indigenous scholar, who is Shawnee/Lenape and originally from Portland, Oregon, has spent much of his career studying the Doctrine of Discovery, which originated in the form of papal bulls, edicts issued by the Catholic Church in the 15th century to empower Portugal and Spain to colonize, plunder and enslave West Africa and the Americas. Other colonial powers soon followed suit, and the doctrine became the basis for slavery and European claims over Indigenous land and people.
Newcomb is among many people calling on the Pope to explicitly acknowledge the Doctrine of Discovery and the harms it’s caused.
He spoke with the CBC’s Jared Monkman on The Trailbreaker Wednesday.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Before we get into what the Pope is or isn’t saying today, I want to talk a little bit about the history of the Doctrine of Discovery. What happened when it was established?
Well, before I go into that, I want to set the context for this conversation very briefly. And that context is the original free and independent existence of our nations and peoples, extending back to the beginning of time and the contrast between that free existence and the system of domination that was brought by ship across the ocean and imposed on everyone and everything throughout this hemisphere and many other parts of the world as well.
And that system of domination is articulated and expressed in Vatican documents from the 15th century. And when you get into the specific Latin language of those documents, you see the patterns of domination and dehumanization that have been … exacted or imposed upon our nations and peoples over centuries. And so with that context in mind, we have to look at the overall responsibility that the church bears for having issued those documents…
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