Letters to the Editor: Pope Francis, please denounce the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’

Pope Francis kisses the hand of a Canadian Indigenous girl as he arrives at Edmonton Worldwide Airport on Sunday.

(Gregorio Borgia / Related Press)

To the editor: As an Indigenous individual within the U.S., I supply heartfelt due to Pope Francis for his penitent pilgrimage to Canada to ask forgiveness for the compelled assimilation of Native individuals in Catholic boarding faculties there. I want the pope would do the identical right here; nevertheless, not all boarding faculties have been Catholic.

Each my mother and father have been subjected to compelled boarding faculties. My orphaned Seneca father was despatched to Thomas Indian Faculty in New York, and my Apache mom was despatched from her tribe in Arizona to the Sherman Indian Faculty in Riverside County.

The tragic boarding college problem is however a symptom of one thing extra insidious. One of many articles you revealed on the pope’s apology talked about the Doctrine of Discovery and its papal origin. It was a authorized idea that legitimized and superior the European colonization of a lot of the world.

In 1455, Pope Nicholas V granted Portugal’s King Alfonso V and different European colonizers the suitable to “invade, get hold of, seize, vanquish … and to cut back their individuals to perpetual slavery.” The driving pressure was largely not spiritual; it was, moderately, pushed by extra secular appetites cloaked in spiritual intent.

This idea was adopted into U.S. regulation by our personal Supreme Courtroom in 1823 in Johnson vs. McIntosh. This nefarious doctrine must be acknowledged and repudiated, however as an alternative it stays a skeleton in our nation’s closet.

Harold Printup, Mar Vista

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To the editor: Whereas the pope has lastly issued an apology to Canadian Indigenous individuals, there may be way more that must be finished each in Canada and the USA.

DNA testing must be finished on our bodies discovered buried within the graves of those boarding faculties in order that prolonged households can declare and bury their relations. Funerals must be paid for by the governments. Dependancy remedy must be paid for by the governments. Revival of their Indigenous languages must be paid for by the governments.

This stuff would represent only one small step in making an attempt to pave the best way to therapeutic from the atrocities which were (and nonetheless are) dedicated.

Leslie Martin, Huntington Seaside