Was the Catholic Church responsible for European imperialism? Activists say yes, the Church says no. This book examines the key papal document from 1493. It finds that the Church played no role in English colonization. However, Pope Alexander VI may have intended to bless Spanish imperialism. Either way, over the next 150 years, Spain saw its empire as a gift from him. For many imperialists and many colonial subjects, Spain received its right to rule Indigenous lands straight from the Pope’s hand.
“In the heart of this world, the Lord of life, who loves us so much, is always present. He does not abandon us, he does not leave us alone, for he has united himself definitively to our earth, and his love constantly impels us to find new ways forward. Praise be to him!” – Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ In his second encyclical, Laudato Si’: On the Care of Our Common Home, Pope Francis draws all Christians into a dialogue with every person on the planet about our common home. We as human beings are united by the concern for our planet, and every living thing that dwells on it, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. Pope Francis’ letter joins the body of the Church’s social and moral teaching, draws on the best scientific research, providing the foundation for “the ethical and spiritual itinerary that follows.” Laudato Si’ outlines: The current state of our “common home” The Gospel message as seen through creation The human causes of the ecological crisis Ecology and the common good Pope Francis’ call to action for each of us Our Sunday Visitor has included discussion questions, making it perfect for individual or group study, leading all Catholics and Christians into a deeper understanding of the importance of this teaching.
In his final work, the great and beloved Native American scholar Vine Deloria Jr. takes us into the realm of the spiritual and reveals through eyewitness accounts the immense power of medicine men. The World We Used To Live In, a fascinating collection of anecdotes from tribes across the country, explores everything from healing miracles and scared rituals to Navajos who could move the sun. In this compelling work, which draws upon a lifetime of scholarship, Deloria shows us how ancient powers fit into our modern understanding of science and the cosmos, and how future generations may draw strength from the old ways.
Exploring the history of contemporary legal thought on the rights and status of the West's colonized indigenous tribal peoples, Williams here traces the development of the themes that justified and impelled Spanish, English, and American conquests of the New World.
Responding to Vine Deloria, Jr.’s call for all people to “become involved” in the struggle to protect Indigenous sacred sites, Dana Lloyd’s Land Is Kin proposes a rethinking of sacred sites, and a rethinking of even land itself. Deloria suggested using the principle of religious freedom, but this principle has failed Indigenous peoples for decades. Lloyd argues that religious freedom fails Indigenous claimants because settler law creates a tension between two competing rights—one party’s religious freedom and another party’s property rights. In this contest, the right of property will always win. Through an analysis of the 1988 US Supreme Court case Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, which she interprets as a case about sovereignty and the meaning of land, Lloyd proposes a multilayered understanding of land and the different roles it can simultaneously play. Rejecting the binary logic of sacred religion versus secular property, Lloyd uses the legal dispute over the High Country—an area of the Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California sacred to the Yurok, Karuk, and Tolowa Indigenous nations—to show that there are at least five different, but not equally valid, ways to understand land in the Lyng case: home, property, sacred site, wilderness, and kin. To protect the High Country, the Yurok filed a religious freedom lawsuit but then proceeded to describe the land as their home in court. They lobbied for protecting the High Country through a wilderness designation even as they continued to argue that they had been managing it for centuries. They have purchased large parcels of ancestral land and also declare the land their kin, a relationship that ostensibly excludes the possibility of ownership. Land Is Kin demonstrates the complexity of land in contemporary religious, political, and legal discourse. By drawing on Indigenous perspectives on the land as kin, Lloyd points toward a framework that shifts sovereignty away from binary oppositions—between property and sacred site, between the federal government and Native nations—toward seeing the land itself as sovereign.
The right of indigenous peoples under international human rights law to give or withhold their Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) to natural resource extraction in their territories is increasingly recognized by intergovernmental organizations, international bodies, and industry actors, as well as in the domestic law of some States. This book offers a comprehensive overview of the historical basis and status of the requirement for indigenous peoples’ consent under international law, examining its relationship with debates and practice pertaining to the acquisition of title to territory throughout the colonial era. Cathal Doyle examines the evolution of the contemporary concept of FPIC and the main challenges and debates associated with its recognition and implementation. Drawing on existing jurisprudence and evolving international standards, policies and practices, Doyle argues that FPIC constitutes an emerging norm of international law, which is derived from indigenous peoples’ self-determination, territorial and cultural rights, and is fundamental to their realization. This rights consistent version of FPIC guarantees that the responses to questions and challenges posed by the extractive industry’s increasingly pervasive reach will be provided by indigenous peoples themselves. The book will be of great interest and value to students and researchers of public international law, and indigenous peoples and human rights.
Manifest Destiny, as a term for westward expansion, was not used until the 1840s. Its predecessor was the Doctrine of Discovery, a legal tradition by which Europeans and Americans laid legal claim to the land of the indigenous people that they discovered. In the United States, the British colonists who had recently become Americans were competing with the English, French, and Spanish for control of lands west of the Mississippi. Who would be the discoverers of the Indians and their lands, the United States or the European countries? We know the answer, of course, but in this book, Miller explains for the first time exactly how the United States achieved victory, not only on the ground, but also in the developing legal thought of the day. The American effort began with Thomas Jefferson's authorization of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, which set out in 1803 to lay claim to the West. Lewis and Clark had several charges, among them the discovery of a Northwest Passage—a land route across the continent—in order to establish an American fur trade with China. In addition, the Corps of Northwestern Discovery, as the expedition was called, cataloged new plant and animal life, and performed detailed ethnographic research on the Indians they encountered. This fascinating book lays out how that ethnographic research became the legal basis for Indian removal practices implemented decades later, explaining how the Doctrine of Discovery became part of American law, as it still is today.
The world is currently witnessing the emergence of a new context for education, labor, and transformative social movements. Global flows of people, capital, and energy increasingly define the world we live in. The multinational corporation, with its pursuit of ever-cheaper sources of labor and materials and its disregard for human life, is the dominant form of economic organization, where capital can cross borders, but people can’t. Affirmative action, democracy, and human rights are moving in from the margins to challenge capitalist priorities of “efficiency”, i.e. exploitation. In some places, the representatives of popular movements are actually taking the reins of state power. Across the globe new progressive movements are emerging to bridge national identities and boundaries, in solidarity with transnational class, gender, and ethnic struggles. At this juncture, educators have a key role to play. The ideology of market competition has become more entrenched in schools, even as opportunities for skilled employment diminish. We must rethink the relationship between schooling and labor, developing transnational pedagogies that draw upon the myriad social struggles shaping students’ lives and communities. Critical educators need to connect with other social movements to put a radically democratic agenda, based on the principles of equity, access, and emancipation, at the center of educational praxis. Many countries in Latin America like in other continents are developing new alternatives for the reconstruction of social projects; these emerging sources of hope are the central focus of this book. Major historical change always starts with people’s social movement. Democracy can be one of the best political and social systems in the world but for it to work entails the sustainable participation of citizens. Above all, it requires that people be informed and critically educated since the quality of democracy depends on quality of education. There are 2 kinds of power: money and people. If people exercise their agency, they can be more powerful than money. There are some organizing principles of social movements, as: “don’t do for others what they should do for themselves.” Saul Alinsky wrote: Rules for Radicals: A pragmatic primer for realistic radicals; Mary Rogers: Cold Anger: A story of faith and power politics; Michael Gecan: Going Public: An organizer’s guide to citizen action; and Ernesto Cortez’s, Industrial Area Foundation, are all great sources for organized activism that do work. I put some of these principles to the test and they produced positive results, I was a founder and president of a union at my university and I lived my whole life as an activist and learned that, we can do more together than alone. Now we also have a new digital war with the Cambridge Analitica and Breitbart’s fake news manipulation; however, we also have social-justice hacktivism to counter act it, as well as other democratic social media venues that critical thinkers and activist use. The chapters in this book demonstrate the importance of widening and diversifying social movements, at the same time, emphasizes the need to build cohesive alliances among all the different fronts. What some people think is “impossible” can become a transformed reality, for those who dare attempt changing the world as global citizens.
