Divine Land Grants

by Paul Gilk “The disclosure of a myth is deemed academic as long as the myth belongs to somebody else. Recognizing one’s own myth is always much more difficult, if not down right dangerous.”-The Lost Gospel by Burton L. Mack, page 237. As a modestly long-time reader of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs—in the

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The U.S. Government’s Christian Nations Argument in Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States (1955)

Sixty-six years ago, in November of 1954, the U.S. Justice Department submitted a bizarre argument to the Supreme Court in the case Tee-Hit-Ton Indians v. United States. The United States argued that the Tee-Hit-Ton Band of Tlingit Indians in Alaska should not receive monetary compensation for a taking of timber from their Tlingit territory. Why?

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Reconciliation and Canada’s Claim of a Right of Domination Over Native Nations

Let’s take a closer look at the Truth and Reconciliation process embraced by Canada. In one context, “to reconcile” means “to restore a friendship.” Let’s be clear. It is not possible to “restore” a friendship that neverexisted between the dominating society of Canada and the Original Nations and Peoples of the continent. Let’s consider another

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Finding the Papal Bull Documents

In 1988, I realized that I had never actually read the original language from the papal bulls of the fifteenth century. I had only read a few sentences quoted in various sources such as Vine Deloria, Jr.’s God is Red and Wilcomb Washburn’s Red Man’s Land White Man’s Law.  I remember wondering at a certain

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A Thought

As far as the colonizers were concerned, we were never supposed to survive let alone master the papal documents and legal doctrines of Christian domination that nearly led to our complete eradication.  We’ve walked through the fire of a centuries-long genocidal onslaught, and, yet, we press on. We have scars but we’re still standing. We’ve

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Examples of Domination and Racism in an Excerpt from the book America Moves West (Third Edition), Robert E. Riegel, New York: Henry Holt and Company (1957).

REMOVING THE INDIAN MENACE Early settlers in the West were surrounded by numerous dangers, by no means the least was the Indian. While the Indian was in many ways an interesting and admirable person, he made a very unpleasant neighbor for the white frontiersman. From time to time, and without due formality, he went to

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