The Wild Reed: Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Pope’s Apology Is “Just the Beginning”

Monday, July 25, 2022

Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Pope’s Apology Is “Just the Beginning”

Award-winning musician and activist is calling on
Pope Francis to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery

Earlier today Pope Francis issued a historic apology for the Roman Catholic Church’s cooperation with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools, saying the forced assimilation of Native peoples into Christian society destroyed their cultures, severed families, and marginalized generations.

“I am deeply sorry,” Francis said to applause from school survivors and Indigenous community members gathered at a former residential school south of Edmonton, Alberta. He called the school policy a “disastrous error” that was incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus and said that further investigation and healing needs to take place.

“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” the Pope said.

The Associated Press reports that Francis’ words “went beyond his earlier apology for the ‘deplorable’ abuses committed by missionaries and instead took institutional responsibility for the church’s cooperation with Canada’s ‘catastrophic’ assimilation policy, which the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said amounted to a ‘cultural genocide.’”

Doctrine of Discovery

I was hoping that the coverage of today’s events in Canada would report that Francis had officially rescinded what’s known as the Doctrine of Discovery. Singer-songwriter, educator, and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie, for whom I have great admiration and respect, has long called for this action by the Pope.

In a June 21 CBC News article by Greg Hobbs, Buffy explains what exactly the Doctrine of Discovery is and why its dissolution would be so significant. Following is an excerpt from this article.

Songwriter, educator and human rights advocate Buffy Sainte-Marie says the Pope’s upcoming visit to Canada and expected apology for the church’s involvement in the residential school system won’t mean a thing if he doesn’t call for the dissolution of the Doctrine of Discovery.

“The apology is just the beginning, of course,” she said.

The doctrine is an international framework based on a series of decrees . . . called “papal bulls,” that were released in the 1400s and 1500s. This framework laid the legal and moral foundation for how Canada and other countries came to be colonized by European settlers.

As Sainte-Marie put it, “The Doctrine of Discovery essentially says it’s okay if you’re a [Christian] European explorer . . . to go anywhere in the world and either convert people and enslave [them], or you’ve got to kill them.”

As noted by the Assembly of First Nations, legal arguments relying on the Doctrine of Discovery continue to affect modern court rulings. As laid out in a 2018 document, the AFN says that doctrine is the root cause of multiple historical and ongoing injustices against Indigenous peoples.