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    Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery
    Unavailable
    Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery
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    Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery
    Ebook307 pages4 hours

    Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery

    By Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah

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    About this ebook

    ECPA Top Shelf Book Cover Award
    American Society of Missiology Book Award
    ★ Publishers Weekly starred review

    You cannot discover lands already inhabited.

    Injustice has plagued American society for centuries. And we cannot move toward being a more just nation without understanding the root causes that have shaped our culture and institutions. In this prophetic blend of history, theology, and cultural commentary, Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah reveal the far-reaching, damaging effects of the "Doctrine of Discovery." In the fifteenth century, official church edicts gave Christian explorers the right to claim territories they "discovered." This was institutionalized as an implicit national framework that justifies American triumphalism, white supremacy, and ongoing injustices. The result is that the dominant culture idealizes a history of discovery, opportunity, expansion, and equality, while minority communities have been traumatized by colonization, slavery, segregation, and dehumanization. Healing begins when deeply entrenched beliefs are unsettled. Charles and Rah aim to recover a common memory and shared understanding of where we have been and where we are going. As other nations have instituted truth and reconciliation commissions, so do the authors call our nation and churches to a truth-telling that will expose past injustices and open the door to conciliation and true community.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateNov 5, 2019
    ISBN9780830887590
    Author

    Mark Charles

    Mark Charles, a man of Navajo and Dutch American descent, is a speaker, writer, and consultant on the complexities of American history, race, culture, and faith. He is the author of the blog Reflections from the Hogan and was the Washington, DC, correspondent and columnist for Native News Online. He has served on the boards of the Christian Community Development Association and the Christian Reformed Church of North America. He and his family live in Washington, DC.

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    • 5/5
      The past few years have seen many contributions from people of color regarding their experience in America in light of its heritage of white supremacy, especially as it relates to the Christian faith; this work is an important contribution to that end, featuring the perspective of a Native American regarding the "doctrine of discovery" and its implications in Western civilization ever since.The author brings to the fore the principle which undergirded the colonization of America: the "doctrine of discovery," enshrined in papal bulls granting the Portuguese and Spanish dominion over any lands they would "discover," even though the lands they discovered already had Native populations within it. It was presumed that the Europeans "discovering" these lands were superior in belief and nature to those who would be "discovered," and from this principle would come the ungodly, dehumanizing, and genocidal treatment of the Native Americans at the hands of Europeans from the 16th century into the 20th. The author describes how the "doctrine of discovery" became enshrined in American legal precedent in the Johnson vs. M'Intosh Supreme Court decision in 1823, and has remained live and active to the present, used in a justification of denying a Native claim to land in New York in 2005.The author speaks of the transgressions of the nation: the forced deportation of Natives from their lands to places out West; the dire conditions of the reservations; the massacres at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee; the boarding schools and the desire to "get the Indian out of the man". He likewise views "Western" civilization through critical lenses: its white supremacy, its "Christendom" and Christianity's compromise with empire, its dysfunctional theology of domination and conquest, its colonialism, its claims to exceptionalism, and the ugly side of its heroes, especially Abraham Lincoln. He also speaks of trauma and its effects. He yearns for conciliation in truth.It's a challenging read for the white American, but a very necessary one. Many will be offended at the way in which the author approaches many of the subjects, but the reader ought to step out of his or her perspective and consider how it would all look to Native Americans whose legitimacy in the land was denied for nearly 400 years, and to thus be open to the prospect that he is not wrong, and has a clearer view to an ugliness we would rather not see. The author's desire for truth in conciliation is good, wise, and appropriate. That conciliation would, no doubt, lead to a restoration of some land to the Natives. But it is hard to square the posture of the author to be working for an America "for everyone" with wide-ranging thoroughgoing land claims that would come at the expense of plenty of others who are here in America. The means by which land was taken from Native Americans was, without an argument, unjust and wrong. Then again, for generations before Europeans came (and even afterward!), Natives would dispossess other Natives through war. Based on genetics and records it would seem that human history is one long series of migrations (or invasions): in many instances, the newcomers genetically assimilated into the local populations, with either the newcomers or the locals assimilating culturally into the other; yet in many other instances, the newcomers wiped out the local populations and replaced them on the land. For that matter, the Bible itself testifies to the same piece of land being possessed, at different times, by different peoples. So what do you do with land claims and land ownership? I do not think it is an easy question with an easy answer, and worthy of more meditation.Regardless, invaluable and important reading. Highly recommended.**galley received as part of early review program