Here is a summary of Native American-related news around the U.S. this week:
Vatican repudiates legal, ideological concept that drove colonization
The Vatican is rejecting the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery,” an ideological and legal concept rooted in 15th Century papal bulls (directives). Together, they have the Church’s blessing for the European conquest of the New World, the enslavement of “infidels,” and the denial of indigenous land rights.
Many Native Americans and legal analysts say the doctrine underpins U.S. law today. They cite an 1823 Supreme Court case, Johnson v. McIntosh, in which Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that discovery of the New World gave the discoverers a right of title to the land.
“The Church acknowledges that these papal bulls did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples,” reads the Vatican statement. “The Church is also aware that the contents of these documents were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers…to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples…at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities.”
Shawnee Lenape scholar and author Steven Newcomb has spent much of his career studying the Doctrine. He expressed some concern with the Vatican statement.
“It’s easy for them to quote the language from the Papal Bull of 1537 because it's favorable language, but they never quote any language from the earlier Papal document to explain what it is we're even complaining about,” he told VOA, referring to a decree by a later pope which said Indians should not be robbed of “liberty or the possession of their property.”
Read Vatican statement here:
“I think it’s disgusting that the owner of this art auction house is selling off bones of a Native American person. Would you want someone selling your ancestors’ bones?” https://t.co/EQiYmxXVfN
— ARTnews (@artnews) March 30, 2023
Protesters block sale of alleged Native American skull
A North Carolina gallery stopped Saturday’s auction of what was listed as a 600-year-old skull of a Native North American after protests by members of a state-recognized tribe and allied demonstrators.
They cited the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which bans “all trafficking in Native American human remains for sale or profit unless they are excavated or exhumed with the full consent of the next of kin or a tribe or tribal community’s official governing body.”
An archived listing says the skull was purchased in the 1960s from a Montreal antiques gallery and that the 1990 law does not apply because the skull was found prior to 1981.
VOA reached out to Shannon O'Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma who is chief executive and attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs.
“It is not clear whether NAGPRA applies because we only have third-party information, some of it conflicting,” O’Loughlin said via email. “NAGPRA criminal trafficking provisions only apply if the Ancestor was taken from a U.S. ‘museum’ or federal agency after November 16, 1990, to traffic, sell or profit off of it.”
Read more:
A 1940 photograph of a signpost at Wounded Knee. Sacred Heart Catholic Church, in the background, burned down during the 1973 AIM takeover.
Oglala Tribe to AIM: No more celebratory gunfire at Wounded Knee
The Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribal Council on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota has banned the discharge of guns at Wounded Knee, the site of an 1890 massacre of several hundred Lakota men, women and children.
On February 27, 1973, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and their allies occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days, protesting tribal leadership and federal Indian policies. The anniversary of the start of the takeover has since been designated as Liberation Day.
AIM activists and supporters mark the date each year with celebrations at Wounded Knee that include firing their weapons (see clip below, courtesy of a tribe member who asked not to be named).
Descendants of massacre victims and survivors have long opposed the practice as profoundly disrespectful.
“My grandfather, he was a survivor of that day,” said Marlis Afraid of Hawk. “And those relatives who were massacred, they are still there. They didn’t cross over. And me, I am their voice.”
Adding insult to injury, she noted, “the people firing the guns don’t even have the decency to pick up their empty shells.”
Watch the Oglala Lakota tribal council vote here:
Tombstone of Amos Laframboise, a student at the Carlisle Indian School, Carlisle, Pa. (Cecily Hillary/VOA)
US Army to repatriate Carlisle student remains
The U.S. Army says it has approved the repatriation of the remains of a Carlisle Indian school student who died 144 years ago.
Amos Laframboise was among the first children sent to the Carlisle Indian School, the first of hundreds of schools designed to strip Native youth of their traditions and to remake them as “civilized” Americans.
He died just 20 days after arriving.
Since 2016, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota has fought to have the child’s remains sent home, citing the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).
Previously, the Army said that NAGPRA did not apply in this case “because the remains are not part of a collection.” The Army had also called for a signed affidavit from a lineal descendant of the child.
Tribal members say the army notified them this week that Laframboise will be disinterred in September.
Read more:
Detail from "Mašké" (friend), by Denver, Colorado-based Hunkpapa Lakota artist Danielle SeeWalker.
Lakota artist: ‘We’re still here’
Danielle SeeWalker, a Hunkpapa Lakota artist from the Standing Rock Reservation now living in Colorado, says she is working to give an accurate and insightful representation of contemporary Native American life. Her artwork is on exhibit in the Western U.S. state of Colorado. VOA’s Scott Stearns gives us a look.