Celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day - Annual Papal Bulls Burning

Indigenous peoples and supporters seek the formal revocation of the 1493 papal bull “Inter Caetera.” This decree was issued by the Vatican to Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the Caribbean. Along with the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, it sought to establish Christian dominion over the globe and called for the subjugation of non-Christian peoples and seizure of their lands. As a result, an estimated 100 million indigenous peoples were killed off in the process of Europe’s colonization of the indigenous world. This papal edict has never been repealed and is the foundation-stone of the international system we live under today and directly related to the corporate-state-military plunder and rape of the planet, which is sometimes linked to the phenomenon known as “globalization.”

Since the Columbus Quincentennial in 1992, indigenous peoples have reclaimed October 12th as International Indigenous Peoples’ Day with celebrations and protests.   Twelve years ago, Tony Castanha, a Boricua (Puerto Rican) in Hawai’i who was reconnecting with his Taino ancestry, began commemorating the day with a ceremonial burning of the 1493 Papal Bull Inter Caetera. This racist law became one of the foundations of the Christian Doctrine of Discovery and many laws authorizing the taking of native peoples’ land.

Now there is an international movement by indigenous peoples to revoke the Papal Bulls, and hopefully begin the unraveling of more than 500 years of genocidal laws.  Recently the Episcopal Church passed a landmark resolution entitled “Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery”.