When Our Native Nations Were Living Free and Independent of the Ideas of Christendom

Prior to Columbus’s invasive arrival to our part of Mother Earth, our nations of Great Turtle Island (“North America”) were living in a physical location that was entirely free and independent of the Western Christendom’s system of domination. At that time, our nations were still free and independent of all the ideas and mental activities of Christendom. This means that the Christian Europeans could come up with whatever ideas and arguments they wanted, but thousands of miles away, in the physical location of our ancestors, the ideas and arguments of the Christian world had zero effect on our nations.

Based on the above observation, there is a potential argument that our Native nations never seem to have used in response to Christendom’s system of the domination. The argument is this: Because our ancestors and our nations were living thousands of miles away from the domain of Christendom, our nations were rightfully free and independent of anything that Francisco de Vitoria or any other Christian thinkers had to say. When Vitoria said in one of his lectures that all nations throughout the world are subject to one universal standard, such as ‘the law of nations’ (‘jus gentium’), we are able to point out that this was simply Vitoria’s scholarly opinion as a Catholic theologian, an opinion which was entirely irrelevant with regard to our nations because they were living free thousands of miles away from Spain and from Francisco de Vitoria. The Catholic Church’s claim of “universality” is just that—a claim.