Friday, August 4, 2006

Native American Summit at Bear Butte, SD, asks Pope for Help

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Tribal leaders and indigenous rights groups will ask the pope to rescind a 1493 Vatican document which they believe paved the legal road for Europeans to take land from indigenous American people. Twenty-three organizations and 100 individuals signed a resolution Thursday at the Summit of Indigenous Nations at Bear Butte. The resolution, which will be sent to the Vatican for review, targets the Papal Bull Inter Caetera of 1493, in which Vatican officials urged Christopher Columbus to convert indigenous Americans to Catholicism.

“We command you in virtue of holy obedience that, employing all due diligence in the premises, … you should appoint to the aforesaid mainlands and islands worthy, God-fearing, learned, skilled and experienced men, in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents in the Catholic faith and train them in good morals,” reads the 1493 document.

“This is going to be history in the making,” Vic Camp announced before the resolution and a separate treaty amongst summit participants were signed.
[snip] Rapid City Journal

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