History for Settlers № 2
Originally written by Indigenous activist Terre Chartrand
This is the second in a three part series on the true history of North American ‘discovery,’ as explained by Indigenous activist Terre Chartrand. You can read the first one here. I wanted to reproduce her work in its entirely is because it's easy to read, it contains humour and acerbic wit, is on-point with the real historical facts, doesn't infantilize the reader, and clearly communicates the point that North America is stolen land. As many of my readers know, I am becoming increasingly annoyed at the inability of progressives to properly communicate their message without condescension and without requiring an encyclopaedic knowledge of SJW terms. Terre doesn’t do that here, but instead chooses to use humour and a loose style of narrative to tell the tragic tale of the Great White Theft of Turtle Island. If you find it helpful, please share it with the world.
Again, what follows was originally written by Indigenous activist Terre Chartrand. I have made some light edits, mostly for clarity, as well as taking out a few headings . Today I share parts three and four, and will share the final piece in the next few days.
History for Settlers. Know Your Own Stories № 2
Terre takes us on a footnote of sorts, a diversion through the system of papal bulls and the commonly held belief that the earth was flat. Then she takes us through the European religious wars, the sinking of the Spanish Armada, an inquisition you never expect, and the arrival of British colonists on Turtle Island.
We bat around words and names like we all know what they are. So this is a bit of an explainer to build context. And this context matters because these things are still at play in the modern colonial context.
The Doctrine of Discovery1 was conceived from a couple Papal Bull – or papal orders/decrees based on two main, but a few other Bulls over many centuries.
This started in the early 1100s where popes would establish all kinds of rules and decrees about behaviours, what people could and could not do, the rules of excommunication, and basically the dominance of the Catholic Church over land and people.
If I were to write this into a scene, a stout medieval dressed man with a bright red nose would stand on a little wood box. Those ridiculous long horns would sound and our stout man would clear his throat for several seconds. And then announce…. I decree that…. so on and so forth, and…. in the name of the holy Roman emperor whatever the fuck his name was. Amen and such and such.
But this isn’t a script. So.
In 1455 Romanus Pontifex (The Roman Papal rule) basically gave Portugal the right to colonize and establish monopoly in trade with Africa. This included the enslavement of African people.
Think about that… Africa. You can fit the USA and Europe in Africa. Africa before the carving up of the land by Europe – must’ve been hundreds and hundreds of sovereign people.
In 1493 Inter Caetera was decreed to grant Europeans under the Catholic rule dominance of all lands, water, and people “discovered” by Europeans in the name of the Roman Catholic Church. It promoted domination and the supremacy of European rule over every continent and land it encountered. This was aimed specifically at Spain and Portugal at the time.
So they simply had to travel, plant a flag and report back – This is now SPAIN! And if you lived there, you weren’t considered Spanish and certainly not your own Indigenous nation… No. You were chattel – possession of the new supremacy and Uberlords of Europe.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the memes I have seen of people doing this in Europe. Personally I have my eye on a spot of the Island of Anglesey. Now will someone write me a Bull please?
Ok… so that’s out of the way. So the combo of these two Papal Bulls = decree to steal land in the name of your sovereign nation and the Catholic Church who gave it the sanction. Now you can do whatever to establish dominance. This reflects all kinds of opinions held at the time – a man over his wife, a lord over his serfs. You get the picture… a toxic nightmare of an abusive relationship. These people are busy killing their own people, offing their own siblings at Sunday dinner with poisons and inbreeding like crazy – the royalty of Europe. Now flat earth and science…
So the church didn’t really believe in a round planet. Like many knew before Galileo that the earth was round. Mariners and fishers had been travelling to far off lands all over, don’t be fooled that this was the only thought. Pacific Islanders and Pacific/Indian/Asian/American dwelling people knew the earth was round, and likely so do most Indigenous people who spent a lot of time traveling between camps and other places.
But for whatever reason, this didn’t occur to the fancy people of Europe for a long time. At the time of the Papal Bulls that established the Doctrine of Discovery, they really didn’t even fully accept this and the thought was even considered heretical. Magellan sailed around the sea, finally proving to the European super Uberlords that world was round in…. 1519.
So these popes are issuing decrees about lands and people who have nothing to do with them, who are basically completely unknown, and who likely don’t even exist in their minds because you are likely to fall off the earth before you encounter another soul… But just in case – HERE! YOU RULE!
********
A footnote to the footnote: Keep this concept in mind. It comes into play over and over again and other terms are coming.
Ok. So here is a behaviour that we can see even today – I believe this and so it must be so. Your experience of the world is completely foreign to my belief system so you are a BAAAAD person for even trying to say that I could be wrong about something I have never felt, never witnessed.
The echoes of white supremacy, patriarchy and male dominance are strong. They aren’t even echoes, really. This isn’t even the start. This is certainly a good ramping up though.
Any challenges to these, including women and a few men who pass on the last vestiges of European indigenous cultures (mother culture) are being burned at the stake as witches, devil worshipers, and heretics. Heaven forbid you step out of a narrow definition of what these absolutely horrendous people considered to be human. Tellin’ ya, these guys were the absolute peak of horror. And they bred and taught what came here.
Not all English were eating gruel. The Monarchy, aristocracy ate beautiful meals with swans and peacocks, and all kinds of things made with aspics. But the poor folk were eating gruel.
King Henry the 8, the great lump he was, dies without a male heir, but he has this daughter. And another family heir person named Mary. Elizabeth ascends and everyone wants her to marry fast because the country is so vulnerable without a ManKing. She eventually beheads her cousin Mary and asserts herself as ruler. Mary was catholic and now this Protestant queen has killed the bastion of Catholicism. Things get weird with Spain, Spain as the Inquisition loving darling of the Pope.
SO the armada happens. Spain right now has control of the Atlantic. Like everything is Spain in the 1500s. There are privateers (pirates) from other nations but Spanish galleons are in control. So they go to England who is has been impoverished by its own opulence and not enough warring and conquest since the Hundred Year War (and losing to France, like how do you live that down) to start a war. The year is something like 1588 or so I guess. Sir Walter Raleigh had sponsored the Roanoake colony which was already mysterious failure – more on this in a minute.
So the Armada. The Spanish ships show up, there are skirmishes and battles but ultimately, the English fleet is made for the channel waters that the Armada couldn’t handle. The Armada is entirely destroyed in the rough, shoal filled coastal waters of England by a huge storm. This completely unseats Spanish dominance of the Atlantic – colonisation, middle passage and all. The Atlantic becomes the first “Wild West” and England as a seafaring nation quickly jockeys for control.
Now remember that Sir Walter Raleigh? He got kinky with the Lizzie the first. Wellll… kinky. She staked her dominance as being married to the Church of England, and England itself. So I guess it was an extramarital affair. Or so they say. He brought potatoes to England…. and tobacco. But Spain likely got there first. So now starts the era of over-boiled vegetables and potato potages and stews. The average English peasant figuring out the potato isn’t poison or gruel rejoices. Raleigh, much like so many back then, eventually loses his head.
Raleigh funded Roanoake – the first English colony in what became known as New England in 1590 that just ups and disappears. Some think it was a skirmish when the English settlers made a run for Indigenous crops. Others think a skirmish that ultimate results in some squirming – the left over colonists finding their ways into the beds of the Indigenous people and being adopted into the coastal nations. It could also have been diseases. These Euro people were not clean. The were absolutely the type to shit upstream from where they drank.
The first projects to establish colonies were not good. Like they were utter failures for the English.
But other things were happening. Back in Europe all those gruel and potatoes eating people were getting really unhappy about the nature of the rule of the country. And they were learning to read and write starting with that king translating the bible. Oooh the King James Bible with all the thous and thees. So the peasants start making things happen.
There are diggers and levellers who established a belief that they were sovereign over their own bodies. These are the foundations of the modern anarchist movements. But also all over Europe puritans are rising. King Henry already stripped the churches and people keep doing the same but now it is all decoration. The Protestants on the continent are also removing all decorations from their churches everywhere but the strong Catholic hold on the romantic countries who remain a bastion for the church for a couple more centuries. A period of austerity begins focusing deeply on the false idol worship of the Catholic Church. Gone is the gold, the paintings of angels and saints. Gone are the crucifixes. With a literate population, they not longer need the visual iconography as text.
For this we gotta go further back into the extinction of Euro Indigeneity – the whole catholic false idol stuff.
Peter here again. Please let me know if you like this series - if there is interest, I may solicit quality guest writers like Terre Chartrand to write for Dinner Table Don’ts on occasion.