On Thursday, December 3rd, Stan State will be presenting an educational workshop titled “Dismantling The Doctrine of Discovery 3” over Zoom.
This event, the third of a three part series presented by The Nahuacalli Educators Alliance, is designed to help provide an understanding of the “Doctrine of Discovery” and its “dehumanizing principles.”
The Doctrine of Discovery is the ideological edifice that houses the justifications for ownership claims over Indigenous lands and natural resources. This doctrine stems directly from a 1493 papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI, which granted Christian European colonizers the right to appropriate indigenous lands for the purpose of spreading Christian dominion over Indigenous lands.
The 1493 papal bull proclaimed that it was in the interest of the “Christian religion” to claim ownership over territories “not hitherto discovered by others.” Such a proclamation was well-received by those with a vested interest in continuing their accumulation of land and resources, at the expense of the indigenous people who already occupied the lands. It was then that those in positions of power, such as King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, financiers of Christopher Columbus’s bloody expeditions, were in possession of a new powerful means of sustenance for their colonization and exploitive efforts – an appeal to a divine authority.
The Pope was (and still is) considered to be an “infallible and a direct messenger of God,” as Dr. Cueponcaxochitl M. Sandoval, Assistant Professor of Native American and Mexican Indigenous Studies at CSU Stanislaus, noted. In possession of immense, influential power, Pope Alexander VI birthed the Doctrine of Discovery.
According to Dr. Sandoval, because of the immense influence that a Pope has, “this idea of domination was accepted widely and continues to fuel white supremacy and systemic oppression.” By becoming cognizant of these “historical systems of domination” we can “revitalize pre-colonial ancestral knowledge systems, earth-based knowledges, and creatively apply those knowledge systems to today’s context, and to the future,” says Dr. Sandoval.
The dismantling of the Doctrine of Discovery, through an understanding of it and the possible “revitalization strategies” that Dr. Sandoval spoke about, is what this event aims to achieve. This event is part of an organized, worldwide collective effort to repudiate the Doctrine.
Click here to register for the event.
For more information about the event, visit CSU Stanislaus’s event page.