This past Friday, March 31, 2023, was National Indigenous Language Day.
On that day I gave a presentation on traditional/natural medicines to a room filled with Indigenous people, young and old, eager to pick up what was lost of their culture. I very deliberately included Anishinaabemowin (Ah-nish-ih-naw-beh-moh-win), the Ojibwe language, throughout my presentation in honour of that date.
During my presentation, the sun seemed to have tinted to a shade of irony as the Vatican had just announced to the world that it had officially repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery.
The Doctrine of Discovery originates from the 1400’s and is part of a series of legal statements declared by the Pope. These declarations are known formally as the Papal Bulls. The Doctrine of Discovery was the impetus to dispossess Indigenous peoples the world over.
The Doctrine of Discovery led to the eventual loss of our Indigenous languages, culture, identity, and led to land theft by land-hungry settlers occupying the new world in what became Canada. It led to pronouncements of who was an Indian through blood quantum and the extinguishment of status by a process of elimination spelled out in legislative terms under the Indian Act.
In Canada, the irony of this historic announcement was already bleeding through the night as on the eve of the repudiation, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided a peaceful protest camp on lands claimed without treaty by the Canadian government, and an oil and gas company, Coastal Gas Link, in Wet’suwet’en territory in British Columbia.
This police action came just days after the First Nation community of Fort Chipewayen in northern Alberta demanded answers as to why they were never informed of a leakage of 5.3 million litres of toxic sludge containing arsenic into their waters by Imperial Oil nine months before they learned of the disaster.
The announcement also coincided with a protest at the Ontario Legislature by First Nation members representing five First Nations in northern Ontario. They were there to protest the Ontario government’s plan to mine their ancestral lands in an area described by the government as the “Ring of Fire,” due to its mineral-rich deposits.
First Nation Chiefs and their people yelled from the balcony at Premier Doug Ford that they will not allow there ancestral territory to be developed for mining. Premier Doug Ford has been heard on record saying that he would build a road into the ancestral territory of those First Nations even if, “I have to hop on that dozer myself...”
So, despite the Vatican’s announcement, it’s all just business as usual in Canada.
This is fitting, when you consider that the Doctrine of Discovery was used to justify the theft of Indigenous lands and the forced removal of a people that are now partitioned behind small corners of their ancestral territories on lands designated as, “Reserved for Indians.”
Upon seeing the news following my presentation, my mind pushed forward a memory of my life living in Europe as a soldier. One of my clearest observations was how most Europeans spoke two, three languages or more. I admired how they did that. Along the way I learned to speak German as I became immersed in the culture of that country.
Long ago, in what became the new world, my ancestors enjoyed the same right as they traded with other First Nations across the land. Many of them spoke the languages of those other nations. Just like the modern European, they enjoyed the right to speak two, three, or more languages.
Fast forward to this day and the First Nations are struggling to retain those languages as the genocidal policies of the residential school system prove true.
Immediately following the expeditions of Christopher Columbus in 1492, the boats that sailed into our safe spaces not only carried goods for trade but they also carried the instructions for the Europeans to colonize the lands through whatever means possible. Those instructions were interpreted from the Doctrine of Discovery.
Now, days following this historic announcement in Canada, I am still seeing through the lens of irony. I am hoping that Canada will choose to look forward through a clearer lens and see us as the nations that befriended them and allowed them to reside on these lands through treaties — treaties that have not ever been extinguished. Treaties that spelled out the exact opposite of the Papal bulls and the Doctrine of Discovery.
A repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery by the Vatican is a good start. Perhaps Canada can now choose to halt its ongoing genocidal policies as they relate to First Nations people — and adopt a new doctrine. A doctrine of living up to its obligation of sharing land in peace and friendship just like they had promised in those treaties.
Jeff Monague is a former Chief of the Beausoleil First Nation on Christian Island, former Treaty Research Director with the Anishnabek (Union of Ontario Indians), and veteran of the Canadian Forces. Monague, who taught the Ojibwe language with the Simcoe County District School Board and Georgian College, is currently the manager of Springwater Provincial Park. His column appears every other Monday.
