Sisters of Earth Declaration on the Doctrine of Discovery proposed November 22, 2016

Sisters of Earth: Who We Are

Sisters of Earth is engaged in exploring the implications of recent scientific learning for our faith and the assumptions embedded in our religion and prevailing worldviews. We come together from various faith traditions, in recognition of the ecological and spiritual crises of our times, to support one another toward healing the human spirit and restoring Earth’s life support systems.  With women from north to south, we share a deep concern for holy Sister/Mother Earth. We encourage each other to deepen our understanding of the sources of the crises, shed our complicity, ally with those who have suffered, and do our part to change ourselves and the culture so that Sister/Mother Earth and all her children of all her species can thrive again.

As proponents of a culture of compassion, and creativity, informed by learning from science (sometimes called the New Cosmology), we know we can and should live harmoniously with the larger body of life, for the common good.  We believe we must start following the laws, patterns and practices of nature, focusing on interconnection, not separation or destruction or domination. We honor the wisdom of Original Peoples, their creation stories and their spirituality requiring effective care for the Earth. 

We, as Sisters of Earth, are examining how we have participated in and continue to inadvertently contribute to various systems of domination, destruction, and dehumanization, the persistence of these power structures, and how they continue to hurt people in so many ways. We try to look unflinchingly at our culpability with the Christian colonizers who decimated the Original Nations and Peoples (http://www.reformation.org/new-world-holocaust.html), leaving only a small fraction of the over 90 million that were likely here in 1491, before contact. Emerging from under the historical and current domination and extraction mindset, we invite all people to participate in a larger discussion about what change is needed. 

As Sisters of Earth, through a lens of Christian outlook and history, we recognize the truth of the trauma perpetrated through the enslavement and attempt to exterminate Indigenous cultures and peoples by settlers, colonizers and evangelizers, and the resulting centuries of corruption of all earth's inhabitants bodies, minds, hearts and spirits. We repudiate the Catholic/Christian Doctrine of Discovery/Domination ( Resources gathered here)  and deny that it can ever have been right or justified.  This is a highly destructive and death-dealing mindset that continues to destroy people, cultures, and the body and ability of Mother Earth to nurture all.  We do not want our religion to be used any more, to justify political and personal violence, most especially against those who have suffered so much for centuries and under our economic and social systems now.  Those of us, as members of religious communities that may have run the Indian boarding schools, have a very special responsibility to repudiate what was done within our legacy/spiritual lineage. We acknowledge the on-going and current harm, legitimized by the Catholic/Christian Doctrine of Discovery/Domination: sex trafficking, chattel slavery, wage slavery, poverty, racism, classism, genocide, white privilege, patriarchy, emigration, climate change, environmental toxins, extractive industries and more. The patterns of domination and dehumanization expressed in the 15^TH CENTURY papal bulls  have become embedded, inculcated, habitualized, and institutionalized in language, thought, and behavior in our cultural and legal systems. 

As Catholic Sisters and Sisters of Earth, we recognize in Indigenous wisdom the deepest values of our own religious source, Jesus Christ, and his courageous resistance of systems of greed, domination, and exclusion, at the cost of his own life.  Much overlap and complementarity can be found with  a mature understanding of our Christian and Catholic tradition; these are models for living out a new, more life-giving and less destructive path.

We have learned and begun to shed old patterns of human separation and domination over others and over Nature, facilitated in part by our experiences of an unjust system of patriarchal domination, racism, and economic structures that widen the gap between rich and poor and drive the U.S. into wars of empire abroad. For many of us, the writings of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, and the lived example Miriam Therese MacGillis, have awakened us to the interbeing of all species tracing all of our ancestry to one primordial Source. Some of us have traced these insights into an emerging community rights movement that returns sovereignty to local communities where the intrinsic rights of nature can be acknowledged and protected. We are learning to heed ancient Wisdom holders beyond and including those of our own tradition, in service to the entire web of Life. We take hope from Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, Laudato Si’, which recognizes the crises that so deeply concern us, and their interwoven source in human greed and dominance systems. We seek to ally with others who suffer and who lead with integrity. We are listening to what some of the most impacted, the descendants and those on the frontlines are telling us. And we know that much more is demanded from us at this time of ecological and human crisis.

 We stand in solidarity with indigenous peoples requests as put forth most recently by a delegation of Long March to Rome, May 2016;

Indigenous Peoples’ Long March to Rome: What They Seek and Why-*gathered and authored by Libby Comeaux

From the website www.longmarchtorome.org we read:

On May 4th, 2016, the anniversary date of an infamous Vatican decree authorizing the spoliation of indigenous lands and peoples worldwide, eleven indigenous leaders from around the world arrived in St Peter’s Square under the banner of the Long March to Rome, a movement seeking revocation of three papal bulls because:

1.       They were the “blueprint” for conquest of the New World;

2.       They provided moral justification for the enslavement and conquest of Indigenous Peoples worldwide;

3.       They are an ongoing violation of contemporary Human Rights legislation; and

4.       Other communities currently struggling to save their lands are threatened by modern-day ideologies of inequality anchored in the papal bulls.

One prolific scholar, historian and author, who with Birgill Kills Straight co-founded the Indigenous Law Institute (ILI), is Steven Newcomb of the Shawnee and Lenape Nations. He wrote Pagans in the Promised Land in 2008 and the narration of a 2014video, The Doctrine of Discovery: Unmasking the Domination Code. At page 22 of his book, he frames the 1823 migration of the Domination Code from the 15^th century papal bulls into U.S. Constitutional Law:

The Johnson v. M’Intosh ruling is itself an ICM (idealized cognitive model), or paradigm, formed in part by a combination of the Conqueror cognitive model and the Chosen People – Promised Land cognitive model. Together, these two models form a key part of the basis for and background of the dominating presumption that originally free and independent Indian nations are subject to the ideas, judgments, or laws and policies, of the United States. (p.22)

For over 30 years, indigenous scholars and elders have publicly called for successive popes to repudiate, rescind, and revoke the papal bulls that sourced the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. Below is one explanation of this request, presented at the 2009 World Parliament of Religions:

Indigenous Peoples’ concept of health and survival is holistic, collective and individual. 
It encompasses the spiritual, the intellectual, the physical and the emotional. Expressions of 
culture relevant to health and survival of Indigenous Peoples include relationships, families, 
and kinship, social institutions, traditional laws, music, dances, songs and songlines, reindeer 
and caribou, ceremonies and dreamtime, our ritual performances and practices, games, sports, 
language, mythologies, names, lands, sea, water, every life forms, and all documented forms 
and aspects of culture, including burial and sacred sites, human genetic materials, ancestral 
remains so often stolen, and our artifacts;

Unfortunately, certain doctrines have been threatening to the survival of our cultures, our 
languages, and our peoples, and devastating to our ways of life. These are found in particular 
colonizing documents such as the Inter Caeter apapal bull of [May 4,] 1493, which called for the 
subjugation of non-Christian nations and peoples and “the propagation of the Christian 
empire.” This is the root of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery that is still interwoven into
laws and policies today that must be changed. The principles of subjugation contained in this 
and other such documents, and in the religious texts and documents of other religions, have 
been and continue to be destructive to our ways of life (religions), cultures, and the survival 
of our Indigenous nations and peoples. This oppressive tradition is what led to the boarding 
schools, the residential schools, and the Stolen Generation, resulting in the trauma of 
Indigenous peoples being cut off from their languages and cultures, resulting in language 
death and loss of family integrity from the actions of churches and governments. We call on 
those churches and governments to put as much time, effort, energy and money into assisting 
with the revitalization of our languages and cultures as they put into attempting to destroy 
them;

The doctrines of colonization and dominion have laid the groundwork for contemporary 
problems of racism and dispossession. These problems include the industrial processes of 
resource exploitation and extraction by governments and corporations that has consistently 
meant the use of imposed laws to force the removal of Indigenous peoples from our 
traditional territories, and to desecrate and destroy our sacred sites and places. The result is a 
great depletion of biodiversity and the loss of our traditional ways of life, as well as the 
depletion and contamination of the waters of Mother Earth from mining and colonization.

Such policies and practices do not take into account that water is the first law of life and a 
gift from the Creator for all beings. Clean, healthy, safe, and free water is necessary for the 
continuity and well being of all living things. The commercialization and poisoning of water 
is a crime against life.

The negative ethics of contemporary society, discovery, conquest, dominion, exploitation, 
extraction, and industrialization, have brought us to today’s crisis of global warming. Climate 
change is now our most urgent issue and affecting the lives of indigenous peoples at an 
alarming rate. Many of our people’s lives are in crisis due to the rapid global warming. The 
ice melt in the north and rapid sea rise continue to accelerate, and the time for action is brief.

Many religious denominations have publicly repudiated the Doctrine of Christian Discovery,  www.doctrineofdiscovery.org (click Faith Communities). In an April 27, 2010 communication from the UN office of the Holy See(following a similar2005 letter from Archbishop Celestino Migliore), the institutional Roman Catholic Church maintained that the 15^th century papal bulls (a/k/a Alexandrian bulls) have been “abrogated” by the papacy’s subsequent more compassionate exhortations, its mid-17^th-century surrender of civil authority, and recent brief public apologies. Pope Paul III’s 16^th century Sublimus Deus(1537) did reject the Alexandrian bulls’ characterization of Indigenous Peoples as subhuman and therefore destined for slavery for being unable to receive the Catholic faith. There, the bull issued by Pope Paul III proclaimed:

that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.

Sublimus Deus went on to encourage Europeans to instill the Catholic faith in Indigenous Peoples because “they desire exceedingly to receive it.” This imaginary desire overlooked the ongoing violent evangelization authorized by the earlier three bulls, and the colonists ignored Sublimus Deus.

The Alexandrian bulls’ perpetual grant of sovereignty over Indigenous Peoples and their lands on the basis of their non-Christian status – instilled in civil law and colonial practice before the papacy relinquished civil authority – was never officially revoked. As late as the 1823Johnson v. M’Intosh decision, Chief Justice John Marshal adopted the premise that discovery of lands occupied by non-Christians entitled the discoverers to dominion over non-Christian occupants and title to their lands. Marshall wrote, “It has never been doubted that … the United States had a clear title to all the lands … subject only to the Indian right of occupancy, and that the exclusive power to extinguish that right was vested in that [U.S.] government….” The M’Intosh decision continues as official bedrock interpretation of the U.S. constitution’s property law and Indian law well into 21^st century cases, and its derivation from the Alexandrian bulls has been exhaustively studied and documented by Steven Newcomb and others.

In early 2015, the Rocky Mountain Synod of the Lutheran Church donated land and buildings in Denver to the Four Winds American Indian Council as partial reparation for the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. And from within the Catholic tradition, as reported in National Catholic Reporter on September 5, 2015, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Romero Institute sought official papal rescission of the Alexandrian bulls. On March 19, 2016, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops signed a statement entitled The Doctrine of Discovery and Terra Nullius, a Catholic Response. It allied Catholic communities with the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report and committed to further education among Catholics on the history and role of the institutional Catholic Church – and that of many individuals who called themselves Catholic – in the suffering and oppression of Indigenous Peoples that continued through the Boarding Schools era to the present. Noting the institutional Church’s official position of “abrogation,” the bishops added that canon law does not treat papal bulls as infallible. They went on to emphasize the shift that began with Sublimus Deus and continued in later apologies and more compassionate exhortations by the papacy. As to the reliance placed on the Alexandrian bulls by continuing U.S. constitutional law and that of other colonial powers, the bishops offered alternate interpretations of key U.S. cases that arguably could have led to a more just legal system.

When the long-requested meeting with a sitting pope, though brief, did finally take place, it was followed by a two-hour meeting with the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in Rome. Here are portions of the May 6, 2016 Joint Statement from The Long March to Rome to that body:

When we look at the specific wording of a series of papal decrees (inter alia,Dum Diversas(1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455), Inter Caetera (1493)), we see that they called for non-Christian nations, so-called “pagans,” to be invaded, captured, vanquished, subdued, reduced to perpetual slavery, and for all their possessions and property to be taken away from them in order to benefit Western Christendom with global empire and dominations (“imperi etdominationes”) riches, wealth, and vast areas of real estate. Such language is evidence of Christendom’s bid to establish a system of Christian domination all across Mother Earth by means of a Doctrine of Christian Domination found in the papal bulls.

The papal bulls of 1493 called for “the propagation of the Christian Empire” (imperiichristianipropagationem), and for the reduction (reducere), subjection (subjicere), and domination (e.g., “sub actualidominiotemporalialiquorumdominorumChristianorum constitute non sint”) of non-Christian nations (“barbarenationes”) by reducing and dominating them (“deprimantur”).

….

Other examples of that linguistic and behavioral tradition include the 1496 John Cabot charter issued by Henry VII, a Catholic king, as well as the charter issued to Jacque Cartier in 1534, issued by Francis Premier, a Catholic king. Francis Premier received permission from Pope Clement VII to colonize other areas, so long as the French king directed his efforts at locating non-Christian places where Spain and Portugal had not yet laid claimed or attempted to constitute a right of Christian domination.

Here’s the point we are coming to: There has been no “abrogation” of the pattern or paradigm of domination-dehumanization which the Holy See set into motion over a period of a century, and which has been ongoing for more than five centuries. It is still being directed at our Original Nations and Peoples throughout “the Western Hemisphere,” and against Original Free Nations elsewhere such as in Australia and Aotearoa (“New Zealand”). The papal bull Sublimis Deus did not, for example, abrogate the establishment of a system of domination in all those areas claimed by Spain on the basis of the 1493 papal bulls, which Spain understood to be a grant “ganaran y conquistaron de las Indias” (“to win and to conquer [dominate] the Indies.”) (We have seen this Spanish language is on the back of one of the original papal bulls stored at the Archives of the Indies).

Allow us to provide an excellent example as to why Apostolic Nuncio Migliore’s statement was incorrect when he claimed to the ILI that “the bull Inter Caetera, like other documents of that era, has become “ipso facto obsolete and with no effect,” and why it is not true, as Nuncio Migliori said in a letter addressed to Onondaga Faithkeeper Oren Lyons, that the Inter Caetera bull was “abrogated” by the bull Sublimis Deus of 1537. In his book A Violent Evangelism (1992), theologian Dr. Luis Rivera-Pagán states, “In the juridical area, the Alexandrian bulls maintained their authorized character, as shown by the first sentence in the first law of the first chapter of the third book of ‘the Compilation of the Leyes de Indias” (1680), which recognizes them [those papal documents] as the first foundation of the possession in perpetuity of the Americas by the Crown of Castilla.”:

By donation from the Apolostolic Holy See … we are Lord of the Western Indies, isles and mainlands of the Ocean See, discovered and to be discovered and incorporated in our Royal Crown of Castilla … [so that] they [those isles and mainlands] may always remain united for their great perpetuity and firmness, we forbid them being taken away. And we order that at no time may they be separated from our Royal Crown of Castilla. … (Recopilación 1841, 3.1.1, 2: 1). (p. 32)

….

Dr. Rivera-Pagán ended his discussion of this point by saying, “This law is based on consecutive royal declarations by Carlos V and Filipe II, who during the sixteenth century propounded the doctrine of Castilian dominion in perpetuity over the Ibero-American peoples. All those declarations allude to the Alexandrian bulls as the crucial point of reference.” (Ibid.) Then this: “Although we cannot dwell on this point, it is appropriate to point out that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the papal grantin perpetuitywas used as a justification for discrediting the Latin American independence movement.” (Ibid). (emphasis added)

The above examples provide a key illustration of how the patterns which were promulgated in those ancient papal decrees, and other such documents of domination, have become institutionalized in the laws and policies of various states. From our standpoint, the Holy See bears present day responsibility for setting forth against our nations and peoples a deadly and destructive language system of domination (“sub actualidominiotemporalialiquorumdominorumChristianorum constitute sint”). The truth of this is found in one sentence of the Inter Caetera papal bull of May 4, 1493: “We have confidence [or trust] in Him from whom empires and dominations and all good things proceed.”

In our view the Holy See needs to put as much time, effort, energy, and money into assisting with the restoration of our languages, cultures, lands, and sacred places as it put into attempting to destroy and dispossess us from those features of our existence to begin this. Furthermore, open the Vatican archives to our scholars; disclose and repatriate your holdings of any of our cultural and spiritual items and ancestral remains; support the Oglala Lakota Nation in relation to the Sacred Black Hills, address the uranium mining contamination in the Southwest of the United States; take the telescope down at Mt. Graham in the Apache Nation territory; support restoration and healing for our Nations.

We look forward to further and fruitful discussions on this important matter, and propose, among other things, a series of international convenings with the Holy See, to discuss from our respective viewpoints, yours and ours, the significance of the papal bulls of the fifteenth century, and the paradigm of domination and dehumanization. Furthermore, it is time for the Holy See to explicitly oppose the use of the doctrine of discovery and domination by state governments in their relations with Original Free Nations and Peoples.

Writing September 3, 2016 for Indian Country Today Media Network, Steve Newcomb imagines the day when Pope Francis finds it in his heart to repudiate the 15^th century papal bulls from the same office that issued them:

The pope’s announcement and his formal and ceremonial revocation of those papal decrees will acknowledge that at no time in the past did the monarchies and states of Christendom have a legitimate right of supremacy over our Original Free Nations of Mother Earth. Therefore, present day states, which are systems of domination that have destroyed entire delicate ecosystems in our traditional territories, and poisoned the Earth’s precious waters, her lifeblood—have no valid chain of title in relation to our nations or our national territories. Such toxic systems of thought and behavior are premised on nothing but a “chain” of false pretensions and illusions of grandeur.

Standing Rock:  What We See and What We Are Learning -* authored by Libby Comeaux, 11/7/16

There is a prophecy among the Lakota/Nakota/Dakota People: When the Black Snake goes through the land, the earth will be destroyed. The rerouting of the Dakota Access Pipeline so that it would cross the Missouri River – not ten miles upstream from Bismarck as originally planned, but a half mile upstream from Standing Rock Sioux Reservation on lands reserved to them by the Treaty of Ft. Laramie – made the People nervous. The pipeline would carry 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day from the Bakken oilfields to Houston for processing to ship it for export. The DAPL pipeline would pass 92 feet under the Missouri River, the water source not only for the reservation immediately downstream, but for millions of species including humans downstream in the Mississippi River Basin. The question the people asked themselves was, not whether the pipeline would leak or explode, but when. They were fully aware of recent breaks, leaks, and explosions, many on native land.

The Army Corps of Engineers did not heed the respectful but firm disagreement expressed by many affected Indigenous People. An example was elder Phyllis Young in February 2016, documented on You Tube. She eloquently explained that their traditional law, culture, and spirituality given by the Seven Stars require them to protect Water, because Water Is Life: MniWiconi. The Missouri River upstream to the headwaters is Treaty Territory, she said, that has never been ceded. She noted that the Corps had not fulfilled its statutory mandate to protect the water from spills already occurred at three sites she specified. She spoke for the Water and for the human beings who need water to survive and blamed the Corps for the loss of the pristine pure quality of the river water she drank as a child. Citing specific national and international laws that apply to the Corps, including international conventions against genocide, she held the Corps to account to prevent harm to the Water. The Lakota People, all human beings, and Life need this River, she said. The spokesman for the Corps agreed to provide requested documents, acknowledged her presentation as “part of the process,’ and stressed that the federal government would make the decision.

In March 2016, 24-year-old Bobbi Jean Three Legs heeded the request of her big sister to create some recreational activities for youth on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation where they live. In a Living Dialogue with Duncan Campbell aired on KGNU radio October 30 and November 6, she describes how the eleven-mile run she organized came to give voice to emerging concerns about DAPL. About thirty youth participated, three-quarters of them girls. As they ran, more youth as well as elders interacted with them and became aware. One elder told them he was descended from Sitting Bull, who was buried nearby, and that the youth could feel the energy of Sitting Bull helping them. More runs followed; “Spirit wants us to do this,” she said. Later, they ran to Omaha’s regional headquarters of the Corps to deliver a petition with over 1500 signatures against the DAPL. They ran to Washington, DC, and to New York City to raise more voices.

Once between runs, they encountered La Donna Brave Bull Allard, a member of the tribe whose son is buried in the planned path of the pipeline. On April 1 with her permission, Water Protectors began an encampment on her landon the reservation closest to the path of the pipeline. Toward late summer / early fall, representatives of 300 Indigenous Nations from all over the continent and 32 countries had converged on what became known as the Sacred Stone Camp. The population swelled from about 4,000 during the week to 8-9,000 on weekends as supporters brought supplies to the encampment and stood in peaceful, nonviolent prayer to protect the Water, MniWiconi, Water Is Life.

Before dredging by the Corps, the tributary streamed turbulently over the riverbed into the Missouri, forming “Sacred Stones” revered by the people. The settlers named this tributary the Canonball River. In a continuing display of cultural contrast, heavily militarized state and local police – as well as a variety of armed mercenaries – “defend” the DAPL employees and heavy equipment as they advance the pipeline toward the Missouri River crossing. The videos of this “defense” look more like “attack” on the Water Protectors, who bravely maintain a stance of peaceful prayer as they stand their ground. We have been following these events on social media and Democracy Now, and on the official website for the Standing Rock Nation, www.standingrock.org, because most corporate media originally ignored the Water Protectors and rarely gives them full voice. One exception was Lawrence O’Donnell, who spoke as a non-Indigenous citizen to others like himself on August 26, 2016:

The original sin of this country is that we invaders shot and murdered our way across the land killing every native American we could and making treaties with the rest…. We then proceeded to violate every single treaty we made with the tribes. Every. Single. Treaty. …. Their offense against us was simply that they lived where we wanted to live …. We actively suppress the memories of those crimes. … Every once in a while there is a painful and morally embarrassing example … led by this country’s original environmentalists, Native Americans … Yesterday a federal judge heard arguments … now over 90 tribes gathered in protest of that pipeline … and so we face the prospect next month of the descendants of the first people to ever set foot on that land being arrested by the descendants of the invaders who seized that land, arrested for trespass. That we still have native Americans left in this country to be arrested for trespassing on their own land is testament not to the mercy of the genocidal invaders who seized and occupied their land, but to the stunning strength and the 500 years of endurance and the undying dignity of the People who were here long before us, the People who have always known what is truly sacred in this world. http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word

A note on the legal posture in the courts:

·         Charges of trespass are based on unauthorized entry onto private land. Despite the treaty and without consent of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (SRST), over the years the federal government has sold the lands in question to private parties, without the consent of the tribe, and DAPL has purchased an easement on which it has permission from the landowners to build the pipeline.

·         The National Historic Preservation Act was SRST’s basis for the unsuccessful motion for the preliminary injunction. This 1966 Act requires federal permitting processes to “take into account” the effect of a permit on properties eligible to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places and "seek ways to avoid, minimize or mitigate" any adverse effects. This law does not prevent demolition of such sites but it does require a prior process which includes a government-to-government consultation if the lands at issue are tribal lands.

·         Even though the federal district judge denied preliminary injunction, the underlying lawsuit continues. In addition to the NHPA claim, the court has before it SRST’s claims under the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The 1972 CWA provides for the EPA to permit an applicant to pollute navigable waterways to a specified intensity and can fine permittees whose discharges exceed the permitted intensity of pollution.  The 1970 NEPA requires a detailed Environmental Impact Statement whenever a federal agency reviews an application to permit an action that would “significantly affect the quality of the human environment.” SRST claims that the less detailed EA (environmental assessment) was insufficient basis to permit the contested Missouri River crossing by DAPL. 

·         The regulatory agencies called to account in the legal action have many options for non-action, or, at best, delay and partial relief. Obama’s actual authority (and plan) is unknown. Treaty rights should be a strong defense of the Water but the federal courts have not enforced them.

·         As for local communities throughout the continent, whether or not the residents are Indigenous Peoples, the issue within the U.S. legal system comes down to local sovereignty over matters affecting public health and the viability of Nature. Democracy School provides a critique and an organizing approach for restoring what has been lost, and recently the General Council of the Ho-Chunk Nation voted to place before the voters a local community rights / rights of Nature constitutional amendment to reinforce, using U.S. constitutional terms, the original sovereignty that the UN DRIP states should already describe the rights of Indigenous Peoples.  www.celdf.org

·         Placing our bodies in front of heavy equipment as an exercise of First Amendment Right of Free Speech remains available, with consequences. Uninformed local police frequently violate constitutional rights, and trespass charges dispossess Water Protectors of their freedom.

The United States is one of the last countries to declare support of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP). Article 32 Section 2 states:

States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water or other resources.

But the Obama administration, when finally authorizing U.S. “support” of the UN DRIP, issued a simultaneous signing statement that prioritized existing US Indian Law (basically the Domination Code inherited from the Alexandrian bulls) over the UN DRIP. Specifically, that signing statement, at the top of page 5, redefines “free, prior, and informed consent” as not necessarily meaning “agreement.”http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/184099.pdf

In the 15 minutes after the federal judge denied the SRST motion for preliminary injunction on September 9, the Departments of Interior, Army, and Justice announced a temporary withdrawal of the permit pending further review – and stating:

Furthermore, this case has highlighted the need for a serious discussion on whether there should be nationwide reform with respect to considering tribes’ views on these types of infrastructure projects. Therefore, this fall, we will invite tribes to formal, government-to-government consultations on two questions: (1) within the existing statutory framework, what should the federal government do to better ensure meaningful tribal input into infrastructure-related reviews and decisions and the protection of tribal lands, resources, and treaty rights; and (2) should new legislation be proposed to Congress to alter that statutory framework and promote those goals.

The governance constraints on free prior and informed consent have a long history. Official tribal governments were initially established by mandate of the U.S government to facilitate contracts for extractive industries by corporations. Traditional Indigenous Peoples have not been happy with this arrangement; their traditional values are the ones that have ultimately sourced the request for papal repudiation of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. By contrast with the non-supportive tribal chairman during the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee II, the elected tribal Chairman David Archambault II of the Standing Rock Nation stands with traditional values and the Water Protectors.

Interviewed on Democracy Now on August 30, 2016,  he asserts that the pipeline should not pass immediately upriver from the reservation, putting its people at unconscionable risk of toxic leakage or explosion. He maintains that the same objection that the North Dakota Governor made to reroute the pipeline from its original siting upriver from Bismarck should succeed in protecting the Standing Rock Nation.  This stand against environmental racism means that the Indigenous People of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation should not be forced to bear the risks, and live in a sacrifice zone, engineered to protect the overwhelmingly white population of Bismarck.

In support of its motion for preliminary injunction, to stop the DAPL while the underlying lawsuit is resolved, the Standing Rock Nation on September 2 submitted court documents revealing, for the first time ever, the location of sacred and cultural sites, where from time immemorial they had ceremonially released the spirits of their ancestors when they died. These documents were necessary because the sacred site is located on “private property” (Treaty land sold without tribal consent by the U.S. government). The very next day, DAPL heavy equipment operators skipped over unfinished portions of the construction route to intentionally desecrate that very site. Beside themselves with grief, as reported by Democracy Now, Water Protectors streamed onto the land in an effort to dissuade them, only to be met and wounded by vicious attack dogs released by private security forces that DAPL had hired for this very purpose.

But it was not necessary for DAPL to engage private security forces. Over the next months, despite public notice from three major departments of the Obama administration that the permit to bore under that location of the Missouri River is temporarily revoked pending further review, the state of North Dakota, the local county, and several surrounding states have sent statepolice to protect the DAPL construction as it advances toward the disputed Missouri crossing. DAPL cites its contract to complete construction by January. In an election year, the drama intensifies. Water Protectors are calling for President Obama’s most sincere understanding of their plight, his compassion, his constitutional scholarship, and his unique capacity as President to help us all change course to what Indigenous People call “a good way.”

Beyond MniWiconi, Water Is Life, many activists have arrived to stand in solidarity with the Water Protectors because we are at the 11^th hour, 59^th minute, as humans on Earth, to do something significant to arrest climate change. The movement to keep fossil fuels “In the Ground” finds resonance with the brave stance of the Water Protectors. The Sacred Stone Camp, begun so humbly by Bobbi Jean Three Legs and La Donna Brave Bull Allard, is being transformed into a permanent community that is determined to survive the harsh North Dakota winter while peacefully resisting DAPL. About a thousand permanent residents are constructing structures that can house them and their gatherings through a harsh winter – and powering them with off-grid clean renewable energy. A worldwide upsurge of enthusiastic support including funding for the Water Protectors has ensued.

In one particularly poignant moment reported by usuncut.com on October 28, the nonviolent prayerful Water Protectors gathered along a line, and a line of heavily armored, militarized police forces faced them. The Water Protectors were praying, and in their prayers they sought strength from the Buffalo Nation. Down from the hills thundered hundreds of buffalo, approaching the police from behind. The People raised their voices in cheers of gratitude, and their fists in sign of strength. The police appeared baffled, then scrambled to their ATV’s and helicopters to chase the buffalo back. Riding gracefully alongside the herd, light on their horses, could be seen a few of the brave Water Protectors.

This image stays with us as we contemplate the contrast between a life that is close to Nature, and the structures of government resulting from the Domination Code. And we are moved to ask, what are we (the settler nations of the planet) afraid of?

And as the vulnerability of the Standing Rock Nation in the U.S. political and judicial system becomes ever more transparent, we seek to understand how the deep fault line in the U.S. system of law that so disrespects Indigenous Peoples and Nature can ever be healed. By following the lead of the Standing Rock Nation, we want to raise our voices and place our bodies in solidarity with the transformation of policy and law that must follow up this, the largest gathering of unified Indigenous Peoples’ Nations since the 1876 Battle of Greasy Grass (Little Bighorn, Custer’s Last Stand). But this gathering is different. The Water Protectors are braver yet, because unarmed, standing only on their ancient spiritual and cultural traditions and laws, sustained by prayer, fulfilling their obligation to protect the Water because MniWiconi, Water Is Life.

Sisters of Earth: Allies of the Long March to Rome, Standing with Standing Rock

None of us as individuals have credentials in legal and cultural history of the papal bulls. We acknowledge that this history is interpreted differently by groups who have experienced its consequences very differently. But we have learned enough to make commitments beyond those set forth in the Canadian Bishops’ statement. We want to lend our active support to the structural change that is needed.

We stand as allies with the Long March to Rome and endorse all requests specified in the Joint Statement to the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. We ask that Pope Francis give pastoral leadership to the civil leaders of today by showing the humility to issue an official revocation, rescission, and repudiation of the Alexandrian bulls. We ask that he simultaneously make a firm proclamation that the Domination Code inherited from these bulls should be removed from the constitutions, laws, and practices of all current civil governments.

We understand the fear that has so far prevented any pope from taking this ethical action. We will advocate for our civil governments to establish a Truth Commission whereby this history can be fully aired, and the implications of correcting it can be sorted out with input from everyone concerned. We will work with our civil governments – whether or not the pope takes the ethical stand we request – and we will expect our civil governments to undertake the extensive structural changes necessary to support the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples and the Rights of Nature.

By Rights of Nature, we understand the intrinsic, inalienable rights of nature that come from the same source as our Human Rights come, from the source of all life in the context of the unfolding Universe. For example, forests have the right to maintain a healthy ecosystem, grasslands and ungulates have the right to sequester carbon in the soil, so-called fossil fuels have the right to maintain that sequestered carbon, the atmosphere has the right to support Life, and Water has the right to run clear, clean, and fresh in natural streams and rivers.  We are grateful for the transformation of law that has begun, in which Nature’s own rights can be the issue for decision in courts of law, not just the human-use-value of “natural resources” under theories of property law. We have much to do to free Nature from servitude / destruction in the U.S. and other colonial legal systems, where Nature is worse off now than 45 years ago when the first “environmental” laws were passed. www.celdf.org

In these struggles, we are naturally allied with the Standing Rock Nation one more embodiment of the fourth reason for the Long March to Rome:

4                         4  Other communities currently struggling to save their lands are threatened by modern-day         ideologies of inequality anchored in the papal bulls.

We advocate for transformation of constitutional and statutory systems so that Indigenous Peoples (as well as other local communities) can not only reduce, but STOP local insults to the health and safety of their interconnected community of life, relatives who talk and those who climb, fly, swim, and stand. 

We stand with Standing Rock and will do everything in our power to support the Water Protectors financially, and through our roles as educators and commentators, in our activism and with our prayers.

At a minimum, the reservation should not be made a sacrifice zone to protect the white city of Bismarck.

Beyond that, this and other pipelines should be stopped, and fossil fuels should be retained in the ground, until the world community together brings the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere back down to the level that existed before the Industrial Revolution. (For example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgmssrVInP0&spfreload=5 and The Carbon Farming Solution by Eric Toensmeier.) The climate emergency must cause the U.S. government to mobilize immediately to transform the economy into the clean energy economy, for example: www.thesolutionsproject.org

The time for the Domination Code has come and gone, and we can no longer assent to the Doctrine of Christian Discovery from the Alexandrian bulls forming the bedrock DNA of the U.S. Constitution. The UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples must come into full force and effect in the United States of America.

Finally, Nature must be freed from enslavement via the Rights of Property organized as Corporations hiding behind the Commerce and Contracts Clauses. The inherent Rights of Nature to exist, to habitat, and to evolutionary role must be secured. *

Moving Forward

Therefore, we as Sisters of Earth stand in solidarity with current actions at Standing Rock and other acts of resistance across the Globe that are  being led  by our brothers and sisters from Original Nations. We ally with the coalition of communities most affected by current harms who gather in support of Indigenous Peoples' resistance to economic injustice that also impedes the ability of Mother Earth to support life and all who depend on her.  Specifically we encourage  all people of faith to acknowledge the moral imperative of caring for our common home and all its creatures - and Christians in particular to examine the shadow this long and horrific history has placed on our religion, its expression, and our own spiritual lives. We ask our leaders, realizing that almost all of us reading this have benefited in various ways from this extermination and dominance, to acknowledge this and use their positions of leadership to repudiate this way, listen to those affected, and offer reparations in ways acceptable to our Indigenous brothers and sisters. We personally take on the responsibility to educate our communities and networks about the Doctrine of Discoveryand  initiate a process of deep reflection and dialog,  first listening to our brothers and sisters and the suffering we have caused, and then searching for what transformative actions and  reparations we may do to give life, once again.

In closing we would like to share this  wonderful prayer:

During this final day of retreat, I drape myself with the cosmic red shawl and feel the stupendous activity of the fireball alive within me. I am moved to write a prayer of intention for my re-entry into the world and to recite each day in our new religious community, which I and my cofounders have called Sisters of the Earth.

O Divine Wisdom, you who were present in the Holy Fire
at the beginning of time —
Give us Light and Guidance.

You who introduced the first partnership of hydrogen and helium —
Teach us how to combine our energies to give birth to the Ecozoic Era.

You who seeded the dark of space with galaxies and stars —
Gift us with abundance.

You who hold all things together in the Holy Embrace
of the curvature of space —
Keep us grounded and expansive.

You who were there at the sacrifice of Tiamat,
our grandmother star —
Teach us to give Everything to the will of the Divine.

In a moment of grace, Earth learned to capture sunlight —
Help us to photosynthesize the Light of Christ
and to become food for the future.

With awe and reverence we step into the flow
of thirteen billion years of universe unfolding.

We are a further phase change of the original fireball.
We claim that heritage and say YES to the evolutionary
potential that is calling us forward and demanding
that we reinvent ourselves as a species.

May we shape a monastic life coherent with our place in the universe.
May we come to understand the implications of this. May we advance consciousness for the sake of the whole.
May we become expressions of wholeness in this deeply divided world.

We place our highest gifts at the service of this call,
at the service of Divine Love itself.

As Sisters of the Earth, we turn to you Mary,
in your manifestation as the Black Madonna.
We ask you to awaken us to the sacredness of matter
in our own bodies, in all of life, and in Earth itself.

We call out to the voices of our ancestors —
Give us guidance.

We call out to the unborn children of all species —
What do you ask of us?

______

Sister of Earth, Sr. Gail Worcelo can be contacted at Green Mountain Monastery, 420 Hillcrest Road, Greensboro, VT 05841  802-533-7056  (srgail@together.net). This essay is her enriched version of a short piece, "Discovering the Divine Within the Universe," which appeared in the Fall 2000 issue of EarthLight.

"How important it is that we learn the Sacred Story of our Evolutionary Universe, just as we have learned our cultural/religious stories. Each day we will begin to do what humans do best: Be amazed! Be filled with reverence! Contemplate! Fall in Love! Be entranced by the wonder of the Universe, the uniqueness of each being, the beauty of creation, its new revelation each day, and the Divine Presence within all!" —Sister of Earth co-founder, Sr. Mary Southard, Spiritearth, 1994.

* Libby Comeaux has represented Colorado activists who enacted transformation close to home. She served as volunteer drafting support for the 2014 Leadership Conference for Women Religious (LCWR) resolution in solidarity with indigenous requests for revocation of the Doctrine of Discovery, https://lcwr.org/social-justice/doctrine-discovery. She is a co-member of the Loretto Community and served on the Loretto Earth Network and is a supporter of the community rights movement .

Other contributors:

Marie Venner is chair of the National Academies’ Transportation Research Board subcommittee on Climate Change, Energy, and Sustainability and former co-chair of the Risk and Resilience Planning and Analysis subcommittee. She is also on the Steering Committee of the Global Catholic Climate Movement. She writes for the National Catholic Reporter.

Maureen Wild, SC. M.Ed is an  international speaker, master teacher and retreat guide with a focus on Spiritual Ecology- the weaving of spirituality, justice, ethics and Christianity with insights from new cosmology and ecology. She has served as director of two ecological centres in Canada and USA. She is a keynote lecturer at national conferences and is featured in the book Green Sisters, Harvard University Press, 2007.

Molly Arthur is an integrative health and nutrition companion for EcoWellBeing  Coaching for Women   and the convener of EcoBirth- Women for Earth and Birth. Molly explores the spiritual, biological and social aspects of how women can claim their authority to make a better world for future generations. Molly is the mother of two adult children born undrugged, and has twin granddaughters. She has been married for over 43 years, is a 6th generation Californian, an Associate of the Society of the Sacred Heart and a member of the Conscious Elders Network and Bay Area Rights of Nature. She has had extensive experience working with startups and growing networks in her professional sales career.  She promulgates EcoBirth's Deep Womb Ecology philosophy -Realizing our maternal lines back to the beginning of the cosmos is our reclaimed story of creation and redemption. We women come from a long history of oppression and we feel the dark trauma of Mother Earth in our cells. Like in birth labor, we can yield to our body’s innate knowing, to open, to birth our beauty and compassion and as bearers of the future generationsin our wombs, claim our sacred and joyous authority to care for, protect and bless all life. As a collective matrix, we can form a worldreflecting our ancestral kinship of healing, nurturance and well-being.