Musings on "The Doctrine of Discovery"

This past Monday, with 14 states, including North Carolina, and 130 cities, I celebrated Indigenous Peoples' Day. I note with dismay that the current Occupant of the Oval Office clings to the colonizer Christopher Columbus and the fascist rhetoric of the great and noble Italian explorer "discovering" the glorious mythic nation. He fails to mention that the continent was already inhabited by millions of Indigenous people and cultures. Nor does he mention the 15th century "Doctrine of Discovery." This little-known doctrine was a series of devastating theological, political, and legal justifications for European Christian rulers to seize, occupy, and settle other people's lands. To European eyes, the land was terra nullius, legally deemed empty. Neither were the indigenous inhabitants considered fully human. The implicit racial bias in the Doctrine of Discovery permitted indescribable evil.  Scholars estimate that 13 million Indigenous people in the United States and its territories lost their lives due to wars, genocide, enslavement, and disease from 1492 to the present. Such unsettling truths are essential if we are ever to come to terms with the root causes of the injustice plaguing our nation and move toward a more just society.

I can't help but notice the obvious parallels to the Palestinian struggle. Zionists propagated the myth that Palestine was "a land without people for a people without land," a 20th century version  of terra nullius. Both Native Americans and Palestinians are indigenous people victimized by European colonization. Both peoples have been dehumanized and their lands stolen from them. Both peoples have been subjected to state violence: systematic depopulation, including forcible transfers, ethnic cleansing, and massacres. Both Native Americans and Palestinians have been subjected to "lawfare" -- official state declarations denying their basic human rights, and treaties both deceptively crafted and subsequently broken. Both peoples have endured the deliberate devaluing of their lives to the extent of erasure and invisibility. Both have been disappeared in the distorted historical accounts written by the colonizers. They have endured the evils of colonization. Zionism is a settler-colonialist movement similar to the Doctrine of Discovery. It promulgates theological, political, and legal justifications for the colonization and seizure of the historic land of Palestine, which is ongoing.  

I am working my way through Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing and Dehumanizing Legacy of The Doctrine of Discovery. It has much to teach us about the dynamics of the dispossession of the Palestinian people. Mark Charles, the book's Navajo co-author, tells a story from Standing Rock: "...There was a large public gathering of Christians who repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery. And I was there a few weeks later and asked the people who organized it if they got any land back. No, they didn't. Well, did they commit that they would not defend themselves if they were sued in court for the land? No, they didn't do that either. Oh. Well, this was just a photo-op, then. If you're going to repudiate a doctrine that doesn't just have theological or even moral implications but also legal implications, then your repudiation has to have legal implications as well….If you're not willing to actually repent of what this doctrine has done...or give up how you have benefited from this doctrine, then it's not real repentance." 

The Palestinian people continue to struggle because of the absence of real repentance on the part of those who violate their human rights and keep them in chains, as well as those who benefit from this oppression. The Black Lives Matter movement, Indigenous Peoples' rights, and Palestinian rights have laid down a heart-piercing challenge to those of us who have benefited from dominating, dehumanizing ideologies like The Doctrine of Discovery, White Supremacy, and Zionism (both Jewish and Christian): Repent and join with dreamers and resisters in creatively reimagining a new world! Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish captures it well in his poem "Defiance": "You may fasten my chains...poetry will feed my heart, like blood...I will recite it in my prison cell...under the whip, under the chains. In spite of my handcuffs, I have a million nightingales on the branches of my heart singing the song of liberation."

Rev. J. Mark Davidson

October 15, 2020