With the passage of the document, "Implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,"
the WCC also acknowledges a connection between the colonization of Indigenous Peoples" lands and territories
and several Vatican papal decrees and other similar documents from the fifteenth and later centuries. The
motion explains that these were official authorizations to "invade, capture, vanquish" and "subdue"
Indigenous Peoples, "subjugate" them and "reduce their persons to perpetual slavery" and "to take away
all their possessions and property."
The motion acknowledges that the effect of these authorizations, and the doctrines that followed
from them, such as the "doctrine of discovery," "terra nullius" and "terra nullus,' not only have
been ecologically and culturally destructive for Indigenous Peoples, their lands, territories and
resources, but also made passage of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples necessary.
My articles protesting the papal bull "Inter Caetera":