Encyclical of the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala

Encyclical of the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala

The global attention given to Pope Francis' recently published climate-change encyclical, “Laudato Si’” and subsequently his personal plea for "forgiveness" from the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala who continue to endure the most blatant forms of state sanctioned genocide as guardians of Mother Earth in this continent, has ignored the basic fact of continued geopolitical collusion between the Vatican state and the Latin American colonizing elites.

Without the justification of the Doctrine of Discovery sanctified by the Papal Bulls Inter Caetera 1493 and instituted across the continent since 1492 in violation of the Territorial Rights of the Nations of Indigenous Peoples, none of the MINING CONCESSIONS being proffered to the trans-national extractive industries would be considered legitimate or legal. The Doctrine of Discovery continues to camouflage the ongoing pogrom of genocide and TERRACIDE to which this Pope as all others before him would be considered accomplice, in particular since as Bishop Bergoglio of Buenos Aires in 2012, Pope Francis took the position that Argentina held dominion over the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas as a successor state to the claim by Spain under the Doctrine of Discovery.

As a direct consequence of the continuous application and normalization of the Doctrine of Discovery for 522 years, all of the Latin American republics claim dominion and jurisdiction over the territory and natural resources of the surviving Nations of Indigenous Peoples across Abya Yala [the Americas] and only grant minimal recognition as "national ethnic groups" with only rights of "occupancy" but no sub-surface proprietary interests to their ancestral lands and territories.

North of the US-Mexico border where English Common Law is the fundamental legal framework of the US and Canadian societies, not the Roman Civil Law, the Doctrine of Discovery is similarly instituted in the courts, in the legislative branch, in the executive branch, and through social norms which derive from the principles of the US Supreme Court case of Johnson v. M'Intosh (1823). This case establishes the racist pathogen of the legal construct known as the Doctrine of Discovery as fundamental to the property rights of the settler states within their respective constitutional frameworks.

Expanded by Chief Justice Marshall into what is known as the Marshall Trilogy, the Doctrine of Discovery, the conception of Domestic Dependent Nations, and the Divine Right as a settler state of Plenary Power over the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples of the Great Turtle Island Abya Yala, has been extrapolated by Canada as a sister settler state to illegitimately claim jurisdiction over territories and resources under the guardianship and proprietary interest of the Original Nations of the Indigenous Peoples.

In 1823, with the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine by the US government, these same tenets of the colonizing settler societies of North America became the framework for present continental regimes of Euro-American states that continue to collude and compete with each other in absolute contravention to the Universal Human Right of the Original Nations of Indigenous Peoples to the full, effective, and complete realization of the Right of Self Determination, including the right of free exercise of traditional forms of spirituality and ceremony without persecution, discrimination and the sanctification of the oppressors of Indigenous Peoples such as in the case of Junipero Serra.

Genocide cannot be sanctified. Colonization cannot be sanctified. And apologies do not bring justice.

The right of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent as a basic Human Right of the Indigenous Peoples concerning extractive industry projects on their territories is thus fundamentally undermined, and the crown of dominion once exercised by the Vatican under the theory of the "Divine Right of Kings" is allowed to morph during the age of global capitalism into the political position of the "Divine Right of States" who are lashed together not by the teachings of a Christ, but the god of greed.

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Links:
Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery

"The question is no longer whether the Doctrine of Discovery as it is still being perpetuated in policy and practice across the hemisphere is valid. That question has been answered, definitively and finally. There is no moral, legal, or cultural presentation that can legitimately argue that the theory of the Divine Right of Kings, which spawned the Doctrine of Discovery by Christendom, can hold any validity in a democratic society. What is in question now, is on what side of history will each of us as individuals, as families, as communities, as nations and as Human Beings stand. Will we stand up in continental uprising to DISMANTLE the DOCTRINE OF DISCOVERY, or will we comply with the dehumanizing regimes of state sanctioned genocide and colonization that continue to prop up the racist relics and psychological pathogens of the European American project of colonization known as America?”