August 7, 2006

Indigenous summit at Bear Butte
asks Pope for help

By The Rapid City Journal
BEAR BUTTE, SD - Tribal leaders and indigenous rights groups will ask the pope to rescind a 1493 Vatican document which they believe paved the legal road for Europeans to take land from indigenous American people.

Twenty-three organizations and 100 individuals signed a resolution Thursday at the Summit of Indigenous Nations at Bear Butte. The resolution, which will be sent to the Vatican for review, targets the Papal Bull Inter Caetera of 1493, in which Vatican officials urged Christopher Columbus to convert indigenous Americans to Catholicism.

"We command you in virtue of holy obedience that, employing all due diligence in the premises, you should appoint to the aforesaid mainlands and islands worthy, God-fearing, learned, skilled and experienced men, in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents in the Catholic faith and train them in good morals," reads the 1493 document.

"This is going to be history in the making," Vic Camp announced before the resolution and a separate treaty amongst summit participants were signed. The resolution equally targets the Queen of England and asks her to rescind a 1496 Royal Charter.

"It is with much honor that I put my hand on this instrument," Dennis Banks of the American Indian Movement said as he signed the resolution. It's at least part of a solution. It's step one ... to pass this moment on to the next generation so they bear witness and we begin a new day."

Oglala traditional chief Oliver Red Cloud was the first to sign Thursday afternoon, followed by Floyd Hand, an Oglala elder and treaty delegate, and then the various indigenous entities.

Debra White Plume of Bring Back the Way, one of the summit organizers, said she experienced trauma attending Catholic boarding schools.

"I'm really proud to see (everyone) stand up against the people that said we weren't human," White Plume said. "We want our spiritual identity left alone."

The resolution states that the 1493 Vatican document and the 1496 Royal Charter "represent principles of religious intolerance in its moral and legal implications" and served as a "doctrine of discovery," a legal foundation for the "extinguishment of aboriginal title to Indian lands in the United States."

"The doctrine of discovery established a legal paradigm that has caused crusades in the name of Christianity and great harm and injury to Indigenous Peoples throughout the centuries, including the members of Indigenous Nations gathered at this Summit," reads a section of the resolution.

In addition, the Mato Paha Treaty of 2006 was signed Thursday. That document will be forwarded to the United Nations. It recognizes a union among the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council, the Northern Arapaho Nation, the Northern Cheyenne Nation, the Ponca Nation and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador.

Through this treaty, the five entities established peaceful relations among themselves, to maintain an effective and lasting peace, and other goodwill stances, including trade, support and defense.

According to Debra White Plume, the treaty will be sent to the United Nations in about one month. Bring Back the Way will take the lead and send in the treaty. However, the group "needs to package it appropriately," White Plume said. Attorneys will draft a cover letter before the treaty is sent. The group expects the U.N. to keep the document on file but expects no further action.