But how do you offer hope when the Church itself is the oppressor?  When the Church has committed countless violations in the name of Jesus?

About 18 months ago I had the honor of visiting an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) elder and dear friend. He was a Vietnam veteran, an accomplished writer, and a boarding school survivor. Boarding schools were a forced assimilation tactic employed by the U.S. government and American churches in their ongoing efforts to “kill the Indian to save the man.”

My friend had been diagnosed with cancer and had only a few months to live. He and his wife decided that his limited days would be spent cherishing every moment and relationship. After a long journey, I arrived at his house to spend a few hours with him. In his weakened state he did not have the energy for prolonged visits, and most of our time was spent sitting on his porch, with me listening to his stories.

Over our years of friendship, I heard a trickle of his stories, but that afternoon the dam broke, and his stories came flooding out. And they were gut wrenching. Stories about how he “converted” to Christianity in the boarding school, not because he liked Jesus but because he learned that students who said “the prayer” were given bigger portions at dinner. Stories about how the school used cigarettes to manipulate the behavior of the young native students. Stories about the suicide attempts of family members, the strict punishments by the boarding school administrators, and, worst of all, the sex education he received, in the form of statutory rape, from one of his teachers at this church-run boarding school.

I had heard stories like his before from second and third-hand sources. I had read stories like his before of people I did not know. But that afternoon, the firsthand stories of my friend shook me.  He was not angry, nor was he bitter. But he was honest. Brutally honest. And there were no words. There was nothing I could say. He was trying to make peace with his past and was deeply wrestling with his pending death. And there was nothing I could say.

He knew I was a Christian, but he was not looking for Christ. Nor did I know how to offer Christ, so we sat there. I listened. I hugged him. And we said our goodbyes.  He died a few months later.

How do you offer hope when the Church itself is the oppressor? When the Church has committed unspeakable violations in the name of Jesus?

I don’t know, but I believe it begins with lament. And this Advent season I invite the Church to join me.

Earlier last week, after the U.S. launched a barrage of missiles against Syria in retaliation for chemical weapons Assad utilized against civilians, Brian Williams, speaking on MSNBC, said he was tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen, “I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.” Williams went on to describe the missile launch scene as “beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments.”

Terrorism is evil and needs to be confronted.

But when we go beyond confronting terrorism to blatantly celebrating the deaths of terrorists, and praising the beauty of our weapons that destroyed them, we are blurring the lines of humanity. And once those lines are crossed, and we dehumanize our enemy, it is a short and slippery slope to becoming the very thing we claim to be fighting against. Soon we begin looking for prominent religious leaders and institutions to provide theological cover for our violence and justification for our actions.

As a follower of Jesus, who was a tribal man brutally executed by a state working in conjunction with its religious leaders…

As a Navajo man, whose ancestors endured acts of genocide and forced removal by a United States government that was armed with a Doctrine of Discovery, and therefore believed it had a manifest destiny to ethnically cleanse and rule these lands from sea to shining sea…

And, as the grandson of indigenous grandparents, who were taken from their homes and educated in boarding schools run by a government and churches that believed it was their civic and religious duty to “kill the Indian to save the man”…

I humbly offer some words of caution.

May we not celebrate war.
May we not glorify violence.
May we not dehumanize our enemies.

For if we could refuse to dehumanize our enemies, it would make the terribleness of war all the more real. And maybe, just maybe, cause us to engage in it less often.

This article originally appeared on Mark Charles’ blog “Reflections from the Hogan.” Check out his work here.

Friday, September 16, was Constitution Day. While I am deeply grateful that we are governed by a Constitutional government, I’m also convinced that our current Constitution has been influenced by the Doctrine of Discovery and, therefore, has some deeply embedded flaws that need foundational level changes.

The Constitution begins with the inclusive words “We the People, ” but Article I Section II, the section which lays out who “we” are, never mentions women, specifically excludes Natives and counts African Slaves as 3/5th human. Article I, Section II of the United States Constitution demonstrates that this document was written to protect the rights and interests of white, land owning men.

 
And even the 14th Amendment that was passed July 28, 1868 to address those omissions, did not fix it.  The 14^th Amendment extended the right of citizenship to anyone born in this land and under the jurisdiction of the government. However, women were still disenfranchised and did not receive the right to vote until Women’s Suffrage in 1920. And even after Natives became citizens through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, many of our people did not receive the right to vote until 1948.

 
And we often forget that the 14^th Amendment was one of the amendments referenced in 1973, Roe v. Wade, which concluded that unborn babies were not fully human and therefore could be aborted.

Indian Removal, Jim Crow Laws, Boarding Schools, the Massacre at Wounded Knee, segregation. All of these events took place after the passage of the 14^th Amendment.

The problem is the Constitution of the United States was written with the assumption that the dominant had the right to determine who was and was NOT human. And it was written specifically to protect the rights of white, land-owning men, not to the rights of natives or other minorities. And this is evident in many of the issues plaguing our nation today.

Women earn 70 cents to the dollar. Why? The constitution is working.

US prisons are filled with people of color. Why? The Constitution is working.

In 2010 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled for Citizens United and declared that corporations have the same rights to political free speech as individuals, opening the door to unlimited financial political contributions. Why? The Constitution of the United States of America is working. It is protecting the interests of white, land-owning men.

In his final state of the Union, President Obama quoted the Constitution. He was discussing our need for a new politics and said, “’We the People.’ Our Constitution begins with those three simple words, words we’ve come to recognize mean all the people, not just some.”

When I heard him say that, I thought, “Hmmm. I must not have gotten that memo.” It sounds nice, and I’m sure some people agree that we the people should mean all of us. But I’m not convinced a majority of people in the United States are on board with that conclusion. In fact, that seems to be part of the debate that we are having this election season.

Donald Trump is flying around the country promising to “Make America Great Again, ” advocating at the top of his lungs that “We the People” does not include Muslims, immigrants from the south, women, and, based on the obscene amount of money he has made buying and selling land in the United States, definitely not natives.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is reassuring people that “We don’t need to make America great again. America never stopped being great, ” demonstrating that she does not understand the systemic racism and blatant oppression that has been endured by people of color throughout the entire history of this nation.

Unfortunately, the dialogue that is taking place this election season is not about broad-based equality or ending racism. The conversation we are having today is about the type of racism we are willing to settle for.

Our foundations are the problem. The foundations of the United States are not great; they are racist and built on the assumption that people of color are less than human.

But our country is afraid to fully acknowledge our history and our systemic problems. That is why politicians of all races speak to Americans using the language of exceptionalism. American exceptionalism is actually the coping mechanism for a nation in deep denial of its unjust past and its current racist reality.

White Americans tend to be more accepting when minorities pull ourselves up out of our hardships and onto the national stage, and then declare that in spite of our nations colonial history and racist founding documents, America is still great. What drives our nation crazy is when a black athlete like Colin Kaepernick, enters the largest sports stage in our country, the NFL, and quietly refuses to stand during the National Anthem, silently protesting a song which celebrates the history of a colonial nation that was founded on stolen lands, slavery, and ethnic cleansing.

When a document is written through a particular lens, with a certain set of assumptions, like our Constitution was, it is not enough to just add an amendment or two and assume the general consensus had changed. We need to specifically name and acknowledge the implicit racial biases we have inheritted and intentionally decide if the country wants to change them.

George Erasmus, an aboriginal leader from Canada said, “Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.”

This quote gets to the heart of our nation’s problem with race. The United States of America does not share a common memory, and therefore, we struggle to have real community. White citizens of this country remember a mythical history of discovery, expansion, opportunity, and exceptionalism, while our communities of color have the lived experience of stolen lands, broken treaties, ethnic cleansing, slavery, Jim Crow laws, boarding schools, segregation, internment camps, and mass incarceration.

There is no common memory.

But we can change that. We can more accurately teach our history. We can learn about the Doctrine of Discovery and address the inequality it embedded into our foundations. We can stop minimizing our racist and violent past and quit referring to our foundations as great. We can acknowledge that our country and our foundations need an incredible amount of work. We can create a common memory, and begin planting seeds for better community.

So Happy Belated Constitution Day. Let’s get to work.

This week I had the opportunity to stand in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in their struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline by attending an emergency hearing in US District Court in Washington DC.

A few weeks ago I published background to this legal struggle which you can read here. This weekend the matter became both more pressing and violent. On Friday the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe submitted papers to the court identifying several locations along the pipeline route as home to significant native artifacts and sacred sites. One of these sites was about 2 miles west of the Missouri river, on the west side of Road 1806. Most of the protests have taken place in the space east of 1806, between that road and the river.

On Saturday the construction crews for Dakota Access Pipeline jumped to one of the sites identified by the tribe as sacred and began bulldozing the land, clearing away all vegetation and topsoil. This sparked a protest by both Natives and non-Natives who are concerned for that land. They quickly moved their protest to the area that was being bulldozed. (It should be noted that the land in question, east of 1806, is private land and Dakota Access hired private security guards to protect their crews. During the ensuing protest, there were reports of guard dogs being released by the security guards and pepper spray being used on the protestors. This resulted in several injuries to both the protestors and the security guards.

On Sunday a Temporary Restraining Order was filed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe requesting that all construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline route be halted for 20 miles on either side of the Missouri River, which in that area is also known as Lake Oahe. This was to prevent any further destruction of sacred sites and lands.

On Monday, Judge James Boasberg called for an emergency hearing to be held on Tuesday, September 9, 2016.

Once both parties were present and the proceedings started, Judge Boasberg made it very clear he was there to discuss the temporary restraining order, and that he was not eager to discuss the violent clashes that took place over the weekend. Ideally, he hoped to broker a deal between Dakota Access and the Standing Rock Sioux by seeking to build upon what they seemed to already agree on (currently there is no construction taking place on the pipeline route east of road 1806). He asked both sides if they could agree to continue the halt on construction in that area.

Initially, the lawyers for Dakota Access indicated they would not be open to even such a basic agreement, based on principle. They did not see the reason to halt construction for any reason. Later they conceded that if the Standing Rock Sioux would agree to cease all protests and “attacks and assaults” against Dakota Access Pipeline construction workers, they could agree to continue the “halt” on construction (quotations added because the area in question currently is not under construction).

However, during his concession, Mr. Leone, a lawyer for Dakota Access Pipeline, was specific to point out that there were 700 workers actively involved in this project, the work was well sequenced, the land in question (west of 1806) was already cleared (brush removed and mowed) and if construction had not been interrupted/halted, the work would be nearing completion. In other words, Dakota Access had momentum and it would be expensive to stop their progress.

Mr. Hasselman, the lawyer for the Standing Rock Sioux, responded that this was not a compromise he could negotiate. He pointed out that in his argument Mr. Leone demonstrated an inability to distinguish between the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the protestors, both Native and non-Native, from the Standing Rock Sioux and many other tribes from around the country. He pointed out that the leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe were continually and publicly urging protestors to conduct themselves peacefully. And they had no authority or control over the protesters.

At last Judge Boasberg acknowledged that he could not broker an agreement and, therefore, was left to issue an opinion. He opted to give a split decision. He granted, that by agreement, construction would halt east of road 1806 and 20 miles beyond the Missouri river. However, he would deny the request to halt the construction in the area west of 1806.

This ruling was a defeat of the Temporary Restraining Order filed by the Standing Rock Sioux. They had hoped to halt further destruction of their sacred sites both east and west of 1806, the lands Dakota Access rushed to bulldoze after papers were filed identifying them as sacred. Legally, Judge Boasberg ruled that destruction can continue. Those sacred sites can be destroyed, at least until his final ruling is given before the end of the day on Friday, Sept. 9.

Sigh.

Sometimes being Native and living in the United States is like watching a small child take a hammer to a set of fine china. Smiling proudly as they smash piece after piece because they are too young, immature, and ignorant to understand the value of what they are destroying.

Mark Charles (Navajo) serves as the Washington DC correspondent for Native News Online and is the author of the popular blog “Reflections from the Hogan.” His writings are regularly published by Native News Online in a column titled “A Native Perspective” which addresses news directly affecting Indian Country as well as offering a Native perspective on national and global news stories. Mark is active on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram under the username: wirelesshogan

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

Most Americans, and probably a good number of global citizens, can quote the above section of the Declaration of Independence.  But I doubt many can recall much of what comes after that or the historical context from which it was written.

In 1763, King George of England issued the Proclamation of 1763. In this proclamation, he drew a line down the Appalachian Mountains and essentially told the colonies that they no longer had the right of discovery of the empty (Indian) lands west of the Appalachia. That right was now reserved solely for the crown. This upset the colonists, so a few years later they wrote a letter of protest. In their letter, they accused the king of “raising the conditions of new appropriations of land.” They went on in their letter to declare that “he (the King) has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages…”

They signed their letter July 4, 1776.

Yes, believe it or not, a mere 30 lines beneath the statement “All men are created equal, ” the Declaration of Independence refers to natives as “merciless Indian Savages.” Making it abundantly clear that the only reason the founding fathers used the inclusive language “all men” is because they had a very narrow definition of who was and who was not human.

According to the Declaration of Independence, natives are dehumanized as savages who stood in the way of westward expansion.

And our country has no idea what to do with that.

Last year, about this time, the United States was in the midst of a national dialogue regarding the Confederate Flag. It was being called out as the symbol of racism and bigotry that it is. And on June 27, 2015, the issue came to a head when Bree Newsome climbed the 30-foot flagpole and took down the Confederate Flag that flew over the South Carolina State Capitol. She was immediately arrested, but hailed on social media as a national hero. Funds were collected to pay her legal fees. National news organizations clamored for her interview. And on July 9th, the South Carolina state legislators passed a bill to remove the Confederate flag from flying over their capitol.

I watched these events with particular interest. It was good that our nation was having this dialogue and grappling with our racist past. It was good that public opinion was turning and there was some agreement that the Confederate Flag, while undeniably a part of US history, was not an acceptable symbol for our nation or our states to use.

But, as a native man, I was both amused and disappointed, as right in the middle of these historic events our entire country took the day off, cranked up their barbeque grills, gathered with family and friends, and celebrated another symbol of racism and bigotry from our colonial past.

The Declaration of Independence.

For the past 200 years, the United States has struggled with its history of slavery, Jim Crow laws, segregation, sexism, internment camps, immigration reform, and mass incarceration. And while we still have a long way to go, we have made some progress. Our first African American President is completing his second term in office. A female candidate for President is now the presumptive nominee of a major political party. The Confederate flag is no longer being flown over the South Carolina state capitol.

But there is one part of our history that we have no idea what to do with.

Our colonialism.

The United States of America is a colonial nation. The “new world” was not discovered by Europeans in 1492. This continent had been inhabited by millions of people for centuries, even millennia. And you cannot discover lands that are already occupied. That action is better known as conquering, stealing or colonizing. The fact that history books refer to what Columbus did as discovery reveals our racial bias. The ‘manifest destiny’ of the United States of America was achieved through a violent history of systematic ethnic cleansing (Indian Removal Act of 1830, Trail of Tears, the Long Walk, massacre at Sand Creek, Indian Boarding schools the massacre at Wounded Knee, etc., etc., etc.).  The notion that America was discovered, is a racist colonial concept that assumes the dehumanization of indigenous peoples.

And the Declaration of Independence both codifies that racial bias and justifies the violent history that resulted.

But as the nation has grown more diverse and somewhat more tolerant, instead of dealing with our racist foundations, our country just stopped teaching its history or reading its founding documents in their entirety. In the past 5 years, I have traveled the country and spoken to thousands of people about the Doctrine of Discovery and its dehumanizing influence on the foundations of our nations, including the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the United States Supreme Court. Over these years, I have been told by an embarrassingly large percentage of US citizens that they had no idea the Declaration of Independence referred to natives as “savages.”

It is this ignorance that allowed the hypocritical events of 2015 to take place. At the end of June and in early July, we celebrated the removal of the Confederate Flag because of the racism and bigotry it represented. But in the middle of those events, we paused and held a national party, complete with parades, concerts, and fireworks as we commemorated our violent colonial past and the dehumanizing Declaration of Independence that justified it.

Americans love the Fourth of July. It celebrates one of the documents that we, and even much of the globe, believe makes our nation exceptional.  The Declaration of Independence has been lauded by historic figures and global icons such as Fredrick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and Pope Francis as a foundation of equality and human rights.

But as a native man I would encourage each of them, as well as every citizen of our country and the rest of the world, to please, read the entire document.  It’s not what you think.

In the past year Donald Trump has proposed the building of two different walls. The nation is well versed on the first wall. It’s a big one, along our southern border, to be paid for by Mexico, because, as he outlined in his rambling Presidential campaign announcement speech last June, “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

But more recently, Donald has proposed the building of a second wall. This one will be just off the coast of Ireland.

“The New York billionaire is applying for permission to erect a coastal protection works to prevent erosion at his seaside golf resort, Trump International Golf Links & Hotel Ireland, in County Clare. A permit application for the wall, filed by Trump International Golf Links Ireland and reviewed by POLITICO, explicitly cites global warming and its consequences — increased erosion due to rising sea levels and extreme weather this century — as a chief justification for building the structure.”
(Politico May 23, 2016)

Over the past several years, and throughout his campaign, Donald Trump has railed against the science of global warming. In 2014 he referred to global warming as “bulls**t” and in 2013 he called it a “total hoax!”

But according to his application, which was first reported by Politico, when it comes to his personal business and finances, Donald Trump is just as firm a believer in global warming as he is convinced of the threat of immigrants and Muslims.
 

And when Donald Trump gets scared of something, he builds a wall.

If you know American history and understand the worldview upon which this nation has been founded, then the lack of consistency between Donald Trump’s public statements on global warming and his personal responses to global warming are not the least bit surprising.

The following quote from Pope Nicholas V in the Papal Bull Dum Diversas written in 1452 has deeply shaped our nation. This Papal Bull, along with others written between 1452 and 1493 are collectively known as the Doctrine of Discovery. This doctrine helped create a worldview that placed white, European Christian males at the center and reduced most everything else in the natural world to mere assets for their exploitation and profit.
 

 “…invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit”

In the worldview of the Doctrine of Discovery; water, land, plants, animals, even other humans are all considered to be resources that exist primarily to serve and benefit the dominant.

It is this worldview of dehumanization which leads our educational system to still teach that Columbus discovered America. Because you CANNOT discover lands that are already inhabited. That action is more accurately known as stealing or conquering.

A worldview shaped by the Doctrine of Discovery is only able to acknowledge crisis like global warming when they threaten one’s bottom line or personal safety. The values of exploitation and profit are top priority, second only to the comfort and survival of the dominant.

My father is a wise native man who has lived between the four sacred mountains of our Navajo people nearly his entire life. Several years ago he was serving on a committee for a national, predominantly white, Christian organization that was looking at the issue of global warming and creation care. He told his fellow committee members that the reason this country has such a horrible record of caring for the environment is because they have a Doctrine of Discovery that skews and distorts their relationship to the natural world.

In Navajo we have a word, “hozho, ” which translated means harmony or balance. Regularly, as my ancestors have done for centuries, I wake up early in the morning and greet the sunrise with my prayers. I pray for the day, relationships, community, and the environment. I strive to walk in beauty, with people, nature, and Creator.

Watching the sunrise daily is a humbling experience that provides an amazing perspective. The sun rises, and it sets. There is nothing we can do to speed it up, or to slow it down. It happens whether we witness it or not. We cannot control it. Yet all of life is completely dependent upon it.

The Doctrine of Discovery is all about dominance. It’s about establishing a hierarchy for the purpose of taking and maintaining control. And it leads to an incredible arrogance, both towards nature and other people.

The worldview of the Doctrine of Discovery led Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992 to develop the mantra “It’s the economy, stupid”—campaigning to the lie that the health and well-being of a nation are purely the sum of its economic indicators.

And the Doctrine of Discovery leads the presumptive nominee of the Republican party to call a devastating human crisis like global warming “bulls**t” and a “total hoax!”

That is, until the rising sea levels threaten the picturesque landscape on the 18th green on his luxury golf course.

For a nation based on the worldview of the Doctrine of Discovery it is not surprising that it took a real and practical threat to Donald Trump’s personal finances and investments to get him to acknowledge something that the worldwide scientific community concluded years ago. Global warming, left unaddressed, will cause a humanitarian crisis on a global scale.

And it is even less surprising that his response, after acknowledging global warming, was not to propose policies or programs to benefit and help humanity. But merely to protect his personal financial investments, with the building of another wall.

The worldview of the Doctrine of Discovery is not a partisan problem, it affects the very foundations of our nation, everything from our capitalism which is driven by profits, to SCOTUS basing the legal precedent for land titles on the principle of “discovery” and the dehumanization of Natives. Unfortunately, the values of the Doctrine of Discovery are as American as baseball and apple pie.

And when you’re campaigning to be the next President of a colonial nation that is still blinded by a Doctrine of Discovery and comprised not only of immigrants, but also of more than 6 million indigenous people representing literally hundreds of tribes, it is imperative that you understand something.

“It’s about so much more than the economy, stupid.”

The Pentecost story in Acts is a beautiful display of God’s value for multi-culturalism and diversity. In Acts 2, God faced a challenge. His son had been crucified, was risen from the dead and ascended into heaven. And God wanted the world to know about it. At that time there were people from all over the known world in Jerusalem. The problem was, they all spoke different languages. If everyone was to hear the Good News, this language problem needed to be solved.

Now, I assume for the Creator of the Universe, performing one miracle is no more difficult than performing another miracle. So God literally had a choice to make. He could have either allowed everyone in Jerusalem to speak Greek or Hebrew, or he could allow his disciples to speak the languages of the nations. Either miracle would have solved the language problem. So we can assume that God made his choice based on the values he wanted to instill in this new body of believers.

Allowing all the people to understand Greek or Hebrew would have given birth to a single language, hierarchical and assimilated church. The Gospel would have clearly belonged to the group whose language God chose. And the Church would have been unified through their common language and soon to be assimilated culture. Language is one of the best tools to pass on, teach and even destroy culture. By picking a single language, culture and people, eventually the Church would have been fully assimilated to that group. So it is telling that God instead chose to allow the disciples to speak the languages of the nations.

This choice had nearly the opposite effect. Instead of creating a single language, hierarchical and assimilated church, God instead planted a church where the Gospel belonged to everyone. There was no hierarchy. There was no chosen group. And no cultural assimilation was required or expected. When the people heard the good news in their own language the assumption was that this message was for them, their culture and their people. They could come to Christ as who they were.

In fact, this message was so clear, that a little while later, when the Greek widows were being overlooked in the distribution of food they felt completely comfortable to point out the problem. Had the Gospel been shared with them in Hebrew, it would had been easier to assume that the Church was primarily for the Jews and everyone else was second class. It would have made sense why they were overlooked–because they were second rate members in the cultural hierarchy of this new Hebrew church. But they weren’t. They heard the message in their own language. They were full members of this body just as much as the next person.

I praise God for Pentecost–not only for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Bride of Christ, but also because God planted the Act 2 community in such a way that validated and gave ownership of the Gospel to people from every language, every culture, every tribe, and every people. The church was never meant to be an assimilated melting pot, where eventually everything and everyone blends together. The church was meant to be a mosaic. A vibrant colorful and diverse body where every member, every language, and every culture is necessary and adds to the beauty of the whole.

Creator Ahe’hee’.

On Friday April 29, in response to a CNN interview question regarding the expected political and personal attacks from Donald Trump in a general election, Hillary Clinton stated that she has experience dealing with men who sometimes get “off the reservation…”

“Off the reservation” is a term deeply rooted in the implicit racial bias of the United States of America. Reservations are federal lands where Native peoples were herded before and after the “Indian Removal Act” passed by the United States Congress in 1830. Reservations are where our people were moved to during forced relocation like the “Trail of Tears” (Cherokee) and the “Long Walk” (Navajo). Reservations are not owned by Native people or tribes. Instead, they are lands held in trust for us by the United States Federal Government because we only have the right of occupancy to the land, whereas White Europeans have the right of Discovery and, therefore, the true title to the land.

When Natives are “on the reservation, ” it is implied that we are contained, isolated, and controlled. When we go “off the reservation, ” chaos ensues. We have gone rogue, act unpredictably, and are causing trouble.

In its literal and original sense, as you would expect, the term was used in the 19th century to describe the activities of Native Americans:

“The acting commissioner of Indian affairs to-day received a telegram from Agent Roorke of the Klamath (Oregon) agency, dated July 6, in which he says: ‘No Indians are off the reservation without authority. All my Indians are loyal and peaceable, and doing well.” (Baltimore Sun, July 11, 1878)

“Secretary Hoke Smith…has requested of the Secretary of War the aid of the United States troops to arrest a band of Navajo Indians living off the reservation near American Valley, New Mexico, who have been killing cattle, etc.” (Washington Post, May 23, 1894)

“Apaches off the reservation…killing deer and gathering wild fruits.” (New York Times, Sept. 7, 1897)

 

Many of the news articles that used the term in a literal sense in the past were also expressing undisguised contempt and hatred, or, at best, condescension, for Native Americans — “shiftless, untameable…a rampant and intractable enemy to civilization” (New York Times, Oct. 27, 1886).
(Kee Maleskey – NPR June 29, 2014)

But I would not expect Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump to understand this.  They are the essence of the typical, establishment American candidates. Experts in the art of mythologizing American history and well-trained to speak the carefully constructed code language of American Exceptionalism.

The American mythology teaches that these lands were “discovered, ” instead of conquered or stolen. And the language of exceptionalism refers to the 19th century as periods of “Manifest Destiny” and “Westward Expansion.” Rather than more accurately acknowledging that the United States ethnically cleansed this land to make way for American settlers.

Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have been taught to not read the entire Declaration of Independence, lest they learn that the very declaration this country holds as sacred, is actually a racist document, which, 30 lines below the statement “All men are created equal, ” dehumanizes Natives as “merciless Indian savages.”

They have been trained to not ask about the dehumanizing legal instrument (Doctrine of Discovery) or the racist legal precedent (1823, Johnson v. M’Intosh) that the Supreme Court of the United States used to establish the basis for land titles in this country. 

These past 8 months many in our nation have rightly identified the narcissistic words and actions of Donald Trump as offensive, childish, ignorant, and even racist. But, unfortunately, most have not understood the deeper implications of his rhetoric. Donald Trump understands what made America ‘great’–explicit and systemic racism.

One CANNOT discover lands that are already inhabited. That action is more accurately referred to as conquering or stealing. The notion that America was discovered is a racist colonial concept that assumes the dehumanization of indigenous peoples.

Throughout the 19th century the United States of American was literally in a constant state of warfare against native peoples: The Trail of Tears, the massacre at Sand Creek, the Long Walk, the massacre at Wounded Knee, the hanging of the Dakota 38 (largest mass execution in the history of the US), the Seminole Wars, the Navajo Wars, the Puget Sound War, the Comanche Campaigns, the Nez Pierce War and the Pine Ridge Campaign, just to name a few.

American expansion is merely a code word for genocide and ethnic cleansing.

And in a country that gave 20 Congressional Medals of Honor to the soldiers who participated in the massacre at Wounded Knee (1890) and to this day refuses to rescind them, it is normal, even expected, that a leading candidate for the office of President of the United States would thoughtlessly use the phrase “off the reservation.”

A few months ago, President Obama, in his final state of the Union referenced the preamble to the Constitution when he said “‘We the People.’ Our Constitution begins with those three simple words, words we’ve come to recognize mean all the people…”

When I heard that I said to myself, “Really? All the people? When did we decide that? I must not have gotten the memo? Did SCOTUS change the legal precedent for land titles?”

The definition of “We the People” is the very debate that is taking place in the Presidential Campaigns today. Donald Trump seems to be advocating at the top of his lungs that “We the People” does not include Muslims, immigrants, women, and, based on the obscene amount of money he has made buying and selling land in the United States, definitely not natives. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is using terms like “off the reservation, ” and reassuring people that “We don’t need to make America great again. America never stopped being great.” Demonstrating that she does not understand the systemic racism and blatant oppression that has been endured by people of color throughout the entire history of this nation.

Unfortunately, the dialogue that is taking place this election cycle is not about broad-based equality or ending racism. The conversation we are having today is about the type of racism we want to settle for. “Do we want Hillary Clinton to work to keep racism as our nation’s implicit bias; or allow Donald Trump to champion racism as our explicit bias?”

After all, isn’t building a wall, banning Muslims, and personally funding a presidential campaign with a fortune made by buying and selling land that has been ethnically cleansed, merely the fruit of a country that has learned all too well how to deal with the “merciless Indian savages” who sometimes get “off the reservation”?

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Part II in a two-part series introducing the Doctrine of Discovery and Mark Charles’ effort to start a conversation about it among North American Christians. You can read Part I here.

In 1763, King George issued a proclamation known as the Proclamation of 1763. In this proclamation he drew a line down the Appalachian Mountains and essentially told the colonists they no longer had the right of discovery of the Indian lands west of Appalachia. That right was now reserved solely for the crown.

This is one of the places where the histories of Canada and the United States split. The colonies located in what today is known as the United States were angered by this proclamation. They wanted to keep the right of “discovery” for themselves, and so a few years later they wrote a letter of protest. In this letter they stated:

He [King George] has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”

They went on in this same letter to address several other issues they had with the King, concluding with the following:

“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages…

They signed this letter on July 4, 1776.

Yes, the Declaration of Independence, which so eloquently states “All men are created equal, ” 30 lines later goes on to dehumanize natives as “merciless Indian Savages.” The document that in many ways founded the United States of America hinges on a very narrow definition of who is actually human.

The colonies located in what is now known as Canada accepted the Proclamation of 1763 and did not revolt against the crown. However, this did not mean the empty Indian lands to the west could not be “discovered.” It merely meant that right belonged to Great Britain. Aboriginal people were still dehumanized, and our lands were still taken—it’s just that the injustices were done in the name of the Crown instead of the colonists themselves.

In the founding documents of the United States of America and in the implicit racial bias of Canada, Native peoples are defined as less than human and therefore are excluded from the broader group of “all.”

But we don’t talk about that.

In the United States, the issue and rights of “discovery” were crystalized with the following Supreme Court Case ruling:

As they [European colonizing nations] were all in pursuit of nearly the same object, it was necessary, in order to avoid conflicting settlements, and consequent war with each other, to establish a principle, which all should acknowledge as the law by which the right of acquisition, which they all asserted, should be regulated as between themselves. This principle was, that discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.”

US Supreme Court, Johnson Vs. M’Intosh (1823)

In 1823, the United States Supreme Court presided over a case brought by two men of European descent regarding a single piece of land. One bought the land from a Native tribe and the other bought it from the Government. They wanted to know who legally owned it. In reviewing the case the Supreme Court stated that according to the Doctrine of Discovery, Indians tribes only have the right of occupancy to land, while Europeans have the right of Discovery, and therefore true title to the land. This case helped establish a legal precedent for land titles based on the dehumanizing understandings of the Doctrine of Discovery. Lest this seem like ancient history, it should be noted that this legal precedent, and the Doctrine of Discovery, was referenced by the United States Supreme Court as recently as 2005 (City of Sherrill Vs. Oneida Indian Nation of New York).

The histories of Native peoples in both the US and Canada are largely similar; discovery, expansion, bloody wars, stolen lands, broken treaties, residential/boarding schools, cultural genocide, dehumanization and marginalization. If there is a difference, it seems to only be that the Canadian government, churches and people are more passive-aggressive in their injustices while Americans are more explicit.

The United States sees itself as a City on a Hill with a self-proclaimed “Manifest Destiny, ” while Canadians tend justify their expansion through economic benefits and solidifying their national identity. The United States developed the idea of Indian Boarding Schools with the explicit stated intention of “killing the Indian to save the man.” Canada took that concept and built on it, making residential schools a formidable part of its national aboriginal policies.

Both nations have a history of expansion, economic opportunity and aboriginal/Indian policies based on the implicit racial bias defined by the Doctrine of Discovery which dehumanizes people of color.

But we don’t talk about that.

Starting a (Difficult) Conversation

I have traveled extensively throughout the US and visited parts of Canada lecturing and speaking about the Doctrine of Discovery. I would estimate that less than 2% of the populations from either nation have a knowledgeable understanding of the Doctrine of Discovery.

On June 11, 2008 from the floor of the House of Commons, in a speech that was broadcast throughout the country, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper formally apologized to the First Nations people of Canada for that country’s history of residential schools.

This apology was part of a settlement to a lawsuit brought against the government and the churches by residential school survivors. The settlement also set aside approximately $60 million for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And while this apology and the resulting Truth and Reconciliation Commission dealt with the injustice of residential schools, it did not touch on the Doctrine of Discovery.

In the 1950’s and 60’s the United States had one of the deepest conversations on race in its history, the Civil Rights Movement. However, the Doctrine of Discovery was not a part of that dialogue. In fact, one of the moral authorities used in that movement was the Declaration of Independence. So instead of discussing the fact that the US was systemically racist down to its very foundations, including the Declaration of Independence, the public rhetoric affirmed America’s foundations and merely encouraged people to live up to those ideals.

The governments, churches and people of the United States of America and Canada do not talk about the Doctrine of Discovery. We have removed it from our common memory. Instead we talk about our common ideals, or about our stated values for equality and justice.

Or we remain silent.

Throughout its history the United States has worked hard to define racial identity to the benefit of the dominant white race. For people of African descent there was the one drop rule. This rule simply states that if you had one drop of African blood you were black and could be enslaved. Slaves were the free labor source of this growing nation, so it makes perfect sense that the founders would want that pool to be as large as possible. For natives there is the blood quantum rule. This rule states that you can be full, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and eventually your native/tribal identity can be bred out of existence. The United States teaches the myth that this continent was “discovered” by Europeans. Discovery assumes there was nobody here. It was the land Europeans desired. So the less natives there are, the easier it is to perpetuate the myth.

Because of these understandings, the U.S. has been forced to acknowledge, face and in some ways deal with its history of slavery—though unevenly and inadequately. But it has also allowed the nation to ignore, bury and deny its unjust history against natives.

On December 19, 2009, President Obama signed House Resolution 3326, the 2010 Department of Defense Appropriation Act. On page 45 of this 67-page bill, section 8113 is titled “Apology to Native People of the United States.”  What follows is a 7 bullet-point apology that mentions no specific tribe, no specific treaty, and no specific injustice. It basically says “you had some nice land, our citizens didn’t take it very politely, let’s just call it OUR land and steward it together.” And it ends with a disclaimer stating that nothing in this apology is legally binding.

To date, this apology has not been announced, publicized, or read by the White House or Congress.

Creating a common memory

Georges Erasmus, an Aboriginal leader from Canada, once said “Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.”

This quote gets to the heart of both nations’ problem with race.  Our citizens do not share a common memory. People of white European ancestry remember a history of discovery, open lands, manifest destiny, endless opportunity and exceptionalism. While communities of color, primarily those with African and indigenous roots, have the lived experience of stolen lands, broken treaties, slavery, boarding schools, segregation, cultural genocide, internment camps and mass incarceration.

But how do we do it? How do we create common memory where so much government, institutional, church and individual effort has been invested in consciously forgetting?

I recently attended the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada. And I applaud the progress that was made there, just like I applaud and honor the work of Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. But I also know the conversation must go deeper. The United States must find a way to talk about the fact that its very foundations are systemically racist and assume the dehumanization of people of color. And in Canada, the dialogue must extend beyond the limited legal parameter of residential schools. Neither nation can create a common memory until the Doctrine of Discovery is fully on the table.

And that won’t happen until we intentionally decide to talk about it.

9 months ago I moved with my family to Washington DC for the express purpose of networking and exploring ways to initiate a national dialogue regarding the Doctrine of Discovery. I have been greatly encouraged by the vast number of people and communities open to teaching this history and confronting these injustices. Two months ago I recorded a short video that articulated the vision for a national Truth and Conciliation Commission in 2021 (#TCC2021) and the steps we are taking to get there. I welcome you to watch it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a two-part series introducing the Doctrine of Discovery and Mark Charles’ effort to start a conversation about it among North American Christians. Part II will run tomorrow.

In the summer of 2003 I moved with my family back to Dineteh, the land of my father’s ancestors, located in the Southwest United States between Mount Blanca, Mount Taylor, San Francisco Peaks and Mount Hesperus. Today this land is better known as the Navajo Reservation.

I was born in this area, in a hospital located in a mission compound alongside an Indian Boarding school. When you pass through the tunnel leading to the campus of this mission to the Navajo and Zuni people you are greeted by a large sign which reads “…Now the LORD has given us room. We shall flourish in the land. Gen. 26:22”

In 1896, the first missionaries from their denomination’s “Board of Heathen Missions” arrived on the outskirts of a budding railroad town known as Gallup, which was located in the territory of New Mexico. The United States of America was nearing the end of an unprecedented period of westward expansion. Through military force, the building of railroads and the signing and breaking of Indian treaties, the United States was near completing its self-proclaimed “manifest destiny” of ruling this continent from “sea to shining sea.”

Only 30 years earlier, General Carlton gave orders to Kit Carson and 700 of his soldiers to force our Navajo people to surrender so we could be removed from this area and relocated to a barren strip of land hundreds of miles away in the eastern section of the territory. It was through bloody, violent, and genocidal acts of war that this land was cleared to make room for the approaching onslaught of white settlers, prospectors, soldiers, and missionaries.

But we don’t talk about that.

This unjust and dehumanizing history has largely been forgotten. Even when it is mentioned, it is not connected in any direct way to the missions, towns and people who are living there today.

Why does this mission reference Genesis 26? And why did the founding missionaries claim God’s leading and divine provision for a piece of land that was never given, but rather violently taken?

The answer to that question lies in the selective memory of the people from both the United States and Canada.

There is a broad misconception that the history of Turtle Island began with the “discovery” of this continent by European explorers like Christopher Columbus and Jacques Cartier.

Every year on the second Monday of October, the United States celebrates Columbus Day. There is a statue of Christopher Columbus in Washington DC located to the north of the US Capitol building that reads: “To the memory of Christopher Columbus whose high faith and indomitable courage gave to mankind a new world.”

There is another statue in Grant Park in Chicago that enshrines Christopher Columbus with the label “Discoverer of America.” It also celebrates his words spoken on October 12, 1492, “By the Grace of God and in the Name of Her Majesty Queen Isabella, I am taking possession of these lands.”

Likewise, there are statues and plaques located throughout Canada and France, like the one in Montreal which reads, “To Jacques Cartier, born in Saint-Malo, December 1st, 1491. Sent by François Ier to discover Canada in April 20th 1534. Reaching the entrance of the Saint-Lawrence River, on July 16th of the same year. He took possession of the land on behalf of the king his master, and named it New-France.”

Common sense tells us that you cannot discover and take possession of lands that are already inhabited. That process is more accurately described as stealing, conquering or even ethnic cleansing.

But we don’t talk about that.

Consider these words of Pope Nicholas V, written in 1452 in the Papal Bull Dum Diversas:

…invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit.

This Bull, along with others written between 1452 and 1493 became collectively known as the Doctrine of Discovery. The Doctrine of Discovery is the Church in Europe telling the Nations of Europe that wherever they go, whatever lands they find that are not ruled by Christian rulers, those people are less than human and the land is theirs for the taking. It was this doctrine that allowed European nations to colonize the continent of Africa and enslave the African people. It was also this Doctrine of Discovery that allowed Christopher Columbus and Jacques Cartier to land in a “new world” already inhabited by millions, and claim to have “discovered” it.

The notion that Europeans “discovered” Turtle Island is a racist colonial concept that assumes the dehumanization of aboriginal peoples.

But we don’t talk about that.

Read more tomorrow about the Doctrine of Discovery and the conversation we need.

A version of this article was originally published in Comment Magazine, Winter 2015.