“Iroquois Village” @ State Fair

Highland Forest on Military Tract

My book—1999 (2001)

UG Honors project(magna cum laude)MA thesis @ U of LondonPhD dissertation @ U of ChicagoBook—tenure!!Now out of print

The Discovery and Creation of America

The Mesoamerican City as Symbol

Seven Sites of Primary Urban Generation

• Where did people create Cities?• China, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Indus Valley,

Nigeria, Peru and Mexico– Not Europe– Now in the 3rd World

• How is the Urban Mesoamerican Culture Native, Indigenous, to America?– Sites of a Hierophany

Teotihuacan“Place of the Gods”

Tenochtitlan“Place of Nopal Cactus”

Cities as Ceremonial Centers

• Ritual theaters which oriented human life, thought, and action--organized economic and social activity

• Cosmovision--time and space structured the city into a coherent, systematic worldview

Cosmomagical Thinking

• Mesoamerican city as an expression of the macrocosmos (i.e., universe)– Parallels between the microcosmos (human

body, landscape, etc.) and the macrocosmos– “Total fact” of urban existence

What is the Meaning of Discovery?

• Discovery and Creation of America– Between 1492 and 1521 ?

• Bernal Diaz de Castillo’s description of Tenochtitlan (p. xv)– Discovery and destruction of Paradise

• Yucatan (Uic athan) we do not understand

America as Paradise

• Geographical location of Eden

• Utopian mythology• How do Indigenous

People fit?– Noble Savage or Wild

Humans?– Christians or not?

• St. Thomas

Parliament of the World’s Religions

Major topics

The 2009 Parliament in Melbourne will address a number of crucial topics from religious and spiritual perspectives.

• Healing the Earth with Care and Concern• Reconciling with the Indigenous Peoples• Overcoming Poverty in a Patriarchal World• Creating Social Cohesion in Village and City• Sharing Wisdom in the Search for Inner Peace• Securing Food and Water for All People• Building Peace in the Pursuit of Justice

An Indigenous Peoples’ Statement to the Worldon the Traditional Lands

of the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation

Unfortunately, certain doctrines have been threatening to the survival of our cultures, our languages, and our peoples, and devastating to our ways of life. These are found in particular colonizing documents such as the Inter Caetera papal bull of 1493, which called for the subjugation of non-Christian nations and peoples and “the propagation of the Christian empire.” This is the root of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery that is still interwoven into laws and policies today that must be changed. The principles of subjugation contained in this and other such documents, and in the religious texts and documents of other religions, have been and continue to be destructive to our ways of life (religions), cultures, and the survival of our Indigenous nations and peoples. This oppressive tradition is what led to the boarding schools, the residential schools, and the Stolen Generation, resulting in the trauma of Indigenous peoples being cut off from their languages and cultures, resulting in language death and loss of family integrity from the actions of churches and governments. We call on those churches and governments to put as much time, effort, energy and money into assisting with the revitalization of our languages and cultures as they put into attempting to destroy them;

Doctrine of Christian Discovery

-At least since1452 a succession of Catholic Popes gave Christians sanction to seize lands and goods and enslave non-Christian peoples.-Africa, throughout the Americas, Australia-Origin of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade-“Age of Discovery”-’Christendom’-Christian Empire building-Impediment to adopting Indigenous Values for our survival

Papal bull: (1452) Dum diversas

• Pope Nicholas V. authorizes King Alfonso V of Portugal to:

• “invade, capture, vanquish, and subdue, all Saracens and pagans…to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery and to take away all their possessions and property.”

• Christians encountering non-Christians could take everything!

Papal bull: (May 4, 1493) Inter Caetera

• 6 months after Columbus’ ‘Discovery’• Pope Alexander VI calls for “barbarous

nations” to be “subjugated” and brought to the Catholic faith and Christian religion “for the propagation of the Christian empire” (“imperii christiani”).

• If a Christian enters the lands of non-Christians their lands become the possession of the ‘discoverers.’

Johnson v. M’Intosh(U.S. Supreme Court 1823)

• Chief Justice Marshall writes the opinion• Outline of the Doctrine of Discovery as fundamental

to US Property Law• Non-Indian U.S. federal Indian law borrows the

dehumanizing doctrine of “discovery” by “Christian people” of lands “inhabited by natives, who were heathens.”

• Catholic principle of ‘discovery’ morphs into Protestant Nation building project

Oneida Nation v Sherrill, NY(U.S. Supreme Court decision 2005)

• Justice Ginsberg writes the majority opinion against the Oneida Nation land action.

• First citation is the “Doctrine of Discovery”• Fundamental for presumption of “clear title”

UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

• DoCD an Urgent matter to be addressed by the International community– Unifying issue—slavery, colonialism, environmental

destruction– Paper submitted by Tonya Gonnella Frichner for 9th session– Human rights matter

• Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples– September 12, 2007– CANZUS– From Indigenous ‘people’ to Indigenous “Peoples”

Haudenosaunee StatementOren Lyons (May 3, 2008)

• ...[I]t turns out that the Principles of the Doctrine of Discovery remain foundational and determinative in US federal Law and the law of many other settler states around the world. The Law of Christendom which prevailed during the discovery periods of the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries continues on into today. The Divine Rights of Kings and Popes were the engines of Empire. The Papal Bulls of 1493-94 coupled with the First Letters of Patent issued by King Henry VII to John Cabot and Sons, March 5, 1496 established the process of colonization of the Western Hemisphere.

Cabot Charter (1496)

• Henry VII granted North America to John Cabot authorizing him to:

“seek out, discover, and find, whatsoever isles, countries, and regions of the heathens and infidels that before this time have been unknown to all Christian people.”

U.S. Episcopal ChurchJuly 2009

• Voted unanimously to adopt the resolution “Repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery”

• Advocating for US to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

• Cabot Charter pre-dates Episcopal Church (1530’s)– Episcopalians felt that that DoCD and colonialism

was corrosive to their religion!• Similar moves among Unitarians, Friends, grassroots

Catholic organizations

Urgent contemporary matter to rescind the Church documents

related to the Doctrine of Discovery

How does it change the story of our founding for Indigenous and

Immigrant peoples?

Doctrine of Discovery Study Group

• Collaborative group of Onondaga and Syracuse citizens– Join the list!• Sign up sheet outside or email me:

– pparnold@syr.edu – http://www.doctrineofdiscovery.org/index.htm

Valladolid Debate

• 1550 between Juan Gines de Sepuveda and Bartolome de las Casas– Do Indians of America possess souls?– What does human sacrifice indicate about their

humanity?

Sides of the Debate

• Sepuveda– Classical Greek scholar– Natural slaves– Lower rung on the Great

Chain of Being

• Las Casas– Priest of the New World

• Sailed with Columbus• Friend of the Indian

– Primitive Christians– Had souls and could be

civilized

Sources:Primary sources

Texts generated by Mesoamericans before contact with Europeans

Fevervary Mayer

Picture booksRitual objects

Priestly Writings

• Texts by Spanish priests– Written in Nahuatl

and Spanish• Florentine Codex by

Fray Bernardino de Sahagún

– Christianization

Archaeology

• Cities everywhere in Mexico– Ballcourt in Xochicalco

Ethnography

• Nahuatl as lingua franca of the New World– 32 languages in

Mexico– 2,000,000 Nahua

speakers today

Structures of Mesoamerican Ceremonial Centers

• Worldmaking– city modeled on universe

• axis mundi (Eliade)--Center of Cosmos

• Worldcentering– 1)body as focus (bloodletting)– 2)organized by specialists--priests

• Worldrenewing– yearly cycle of rituals rejuvenated the cosmos