Discovery Doctrine enables radical christianity to seize land, murder indigenous

Catholicism is hope like syphilis is charity.

Portugal, Spain, France and England claimed territory by planting a flag, a symbolic action known as “discovery”. It made no difference whether the land in question was inhabited or not, since only Christians had conferred upon themselves the right to “discover” in this sense. By the logic of the papal bulls, and that of later charters to English explorers made by the English king or queen, indigenous peoples had no rights to land or to legal recognition of any kind. Only immigrants did. From the perspective of modern human rights, or even of simple logic, there is much to criticize in the Doctrine of Discovery and in these rulings. If the federal government claims that the US is a nation of natives rather than immigrants, that test is no longer met. It is also, following the very logic and law of America, to abandon our claim to the dominion over territory, and to restore the land to those who first called it home. [Timothy Snyder]

The indigenous population in the New World was some 112 million at the time of European arrival and in what is now the United Snakes it was about 25 million. Today's American Indian population is about 5.2 million with some 2.5 million living on reservations. According to historian Clay Jenkinson, Thomas Jefferson would be surprised that there are any American Indians still alive at all.

It's time for the State of South Dakota to abandon Bear Butte State Park that it claimed through colonization and remand it to the tribes for governance so they can restore its name to Mato Paha and for the US Park Service to add the name Mahto Tipila to Devils Tower National Monument.

The South Dakota Democratic Party should advocate for paying the tribes, dissolving the Black Hills National Forest, moving management of the land from the US Department of Agriculture into the Department of Interior; and, in cooperation with Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry and Wildfire Management, rename it Okawita Paha National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge. Mato Paha (Bear Butte), the associated national grasslands and the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer/Gallatin National Forest should be included in the move.