On June 21, 2012 ~ Indian Country Today Media Network (ICTMN), the world's largest
Indian news source, posted a Mille Lacs Messenger letter of mine (which I titled)
Set U.S. Indigenous Peoples Free.
To view and read my letter/comment on ICTMN click "VIEW" after Newcomb's
article
and then scroll down to
the second of two comments. Or view and read it below.
___________________________________________________________________
Greetings Steven Newcomb, Thank you for corresponding with me in the past.
I enjoy reading your articles. I agree with your statement "...domination and
dehumanization have been institutionalized in law and policy in the United States..."
A MN county newspaper recently published a letter of mine on this topic.
Set U.S. Indigenous Peoples Free
Our "Founding Fathers'" act of establishing this nation of ours was
fundamentally opposed to the gospel of Jesus.
The United States of American was established on a bigoted
religious doctrine, the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, a
doctrine that denied, and still denies, this land's indigenous
peoples/tribes their fundamental human right to own land and
to be complete independent sovereign nations.
The Doctrine of Discovery was a series of fifteenth century
papal doctrines that were used to create the international
laws of Western Christendom. These laws were used to
regulate and guild colonizing European Christian nations.
After crossing the Atlantic ocean and setting foot on Guanahani island,
Christopher Columbus, acting under the international laws of Western
Christendom performed a ceremony to "take possession" of the
indigenous people’s island land for the Christian nation of Spain.
Then, Columbus and his men, by an act of thievery, forcefully
took possession of their land and enslaved them.
The international laws of Western Christendom asserted that
Christian nations had a right, based on the Bible, to claim
absolute title to and ultimate authority over any newly
"discovered" Non-Christian inhabitants and their lands.
In the Inter Caetera papal doctrine, Pope Alexander stated his
desire that the "discovered" people be "subjugated and brought
to the faith itself." By this means, said the pope, the "Christian Empire"
would be propagated.
Because the World Council of Churches recently denounced the
Doctrine of Discovery and declared it to be "fundamentally opposed to the
gospel of Jesus", more and more U.S. Christians are becoming
aware that, both, Columbus' act of taking possession of
indigenous people's land for Spain and the founding fathers' act of
establishing the United States of America were "fundamentally
opposed to the gospel of Jesus".
In 1823, the Doctrine of Discovery was adopted into U.S. law
by the Supreme Court in the celebrated case, Johnson v. McIntosh.
Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice John Marshall
observed that European Christian nations had assumed "ultimate dominion"
over the lands of America during the Age of Discovery and that upon white
Christian "discovery" the red pagan Indian peoples had lost
"their rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations," and
only retained a right of "occupancy" in their lands.
Marshall also observed that upon the establishment of the
United States of America, this nation acquired ownership
of the indigenous peoples’ lands (stolen lands) from Great Britain,
and that it also acquired the right to subjugate and have "dominion"
over this land's pagan indigenous peoples from this same Christian nation.
This land's indigenous peoples are still being held hostage in their
own homelands; it's time to set them free from our nation's
Christian bigoted laws and oppression.
Thomas Dahlheimer
Wahkon, MN
