On August 6, 2017, Indian Country Media Network ICTMN, the world's largest Indian/Native news source, posted a March 22, 2017, Mille Lacs Messenger letter to the editor of mine as the only comment on an article by Steven Newcomb, an ICMN columnist and nationally and internationally renowned Indian/Native activist. This comment of mine is presented below. This article by Newcomb and my comment on it are no longer presented on the new Indian Country Today website. ICT has a new owner.

My Comment On An Article by Steven Newcomb

by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer



Based On The Bible

In 1832, the U.S. Supreme Court used a 15th century Roman Catholic Church colonial doctrine, a doctrine that European Catholic monarchs and other Catholic influenced monarchs used to formulate their colonization policies, to assert that the United States, as the successor of Great Britain, had inherited possession of all Indigenous Peoples' lands within the newly claimed boundaries of the U.S.. The doctrine that I am referring to is called the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. It is based on an Old Testament scripture.

Indigenous Peoples' cultural rights, including their fundamental human right to be free and independent sovereign nations on their own lands, were violated by the colonial Christians obeying their Old Testament God's evil directive. Psalm 2 KJV. says: "I [Jehovah] shall give thee [Christians] the heathen [Indigenous Peoples] for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel."

[The International Organization for Self-Determination and Equality (IOSDE) recently posted a press release entitled, United Nations Declares The Holy See Legally Responsible and Accountable To Indigenous Peoples For Effects and Legacy Of Racist Colonial Bulls And Doctrines. The press-release is about the Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group Shadow Report/UN-CERD 88th Session: Review of the Holy See.]

One Apache-Ndé-Nneé Working Group Shadow Report statement reads: The Holy See's Inter Caetera not only blessed policies and practices of colonialism that caused what is expressed by Indigenous Peoples themselves as genocide, cultural genocide, and generations of suffering, slavery and loss, but it also put policies and practices into action, such as, but not limited to, through its own missionaries and missions, churches and subsequent schools, that operated and continue to operate in alliance with Kingdoms and subsequently States for own mutually-collective world dominance and at the cost of Indigenous Peoples and their lands, lives, self-determination and cultures.

"The United Nations (UN) Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has recognized that the Doctrine of Discovery, the Holy See's Inter Caetera and related Papal Bulls are within the legal scope of racial discrimination under International Law and therefore require redress." - IOSDE

In his article entitled "Our Lenape Ancestors Were Slaughtered At Bowing Green Massacre" Steven Newcomb, an Indigenous activist, wrote:

"The doctrine of Christian domination, as used by the United States, in the name of U.S. 'law,' argues that our nations are rightfully subject to the ideas and rules developed by the 'first Christian people' to 'discover' the non-Christian lands of 'natives, who were heathens' (U.S. Supreme Court’s wording). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'heathen' is 'a word of Christian origin,' which means it is a word of biblical origin used by the Supreme Court."

"How has the United States managed to get away with officially using doctrines of Christian Fundamentalism and the Bible to claim a right of ownership in relation to our lands and territories? Answer: They claim a 'right of domination' over our nations and peoples based on the Chosen People/Promised Land model of the Old Testament. In other words, because the Bible told them so."

Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer
Wahkon, Minnesota

A related article of mine: On June 17, 2017, the title of my article "Fighting Racism Against Natives In Mille Lacs County, MN," plus the link to it, along with a map highlighting Mille Lacs County, was posted here on the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community's Facebook site.

A related letter to the editor of mine is entitled Dahlheimer: Group – Land title to Dakota nullified. Also located here on my website.