Matthew Tukaki has written to the Pope to ask that he formally renounce the doctrine of discovery, a 15th-century idea that European nations could claim lands if they were not occupied by Christians.

The doctrine is being blamed by some indigenous activists for the evils of colonialism, even though Portugal and Spain started building their empires before it was issued and England broke with the Catholic Church 200 years before James Cook arrived in New Zealand.

Jones says Tukaki has overstepped the mark.

"I know many Maori who are incredibly proud of their Catholic whakapapa.

It's blended as part of identity.

The New Zealand Maori Council needs to focus on the pockets of dysfunction that are blighting the lives of some of our people and stop grandstanding and don't utter another word attacking one of the established churches of New Zealand," he says.

Earlier in the month at a forum Far North iwi Ngati Kahu also raised its concerns about the Doctrine of Discovery, calling on the government to repudiate it.

Professor Margaret Mutu said it undermined the government's commitment to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

"The Doctrine of Discovery underpins our legal system and relies on the myth that white Christians are superior to all other peoples. It gives them permission to dispossess, enslave and exterminate other races, cultures and religions."

"It was used to take the Foreshore and Seabed from us in 2005 and shapes the government's Treaty claims settlement policies and practices today."

"The Doctrine originated from the Catholic Church in the 1400s and despite petitions from indigenous communities, they have refused to repudiate it.

Our hope is that our Government will ask the Vatican to change its position."

Source

• waateanews.com
• rnz.co.nz
• Image: nbr.co.nz

While not addressing the colonisation of Aotearoa specifically, popes have on several occasions repudiated and apologised for the doctrine of discovery going back as far as 1537.

What is the doctrine of discovery?

The Doctrine of Discovery and the attendant idea of terra nullius do not have a precise definition.

Essentially the idea is this: that sovereignty and land ownership were transferred to European Christians simply by dint of their arrival in the "New World."

Papal bulls issued by Pope Nicholas V Dum Diversas in 1452. and Pope Alexander VI issued Inter Caetera in 1493 provided the legal and political justification for European monarchs to conquer and claim lands inhabited by indigenous peoples.

"It is a shameful blight not only on our history here in New Zealand but right across the first nations world where an old, archaic and quite frankly outdated document is not repudiated by the Vatican," Tukaki says.

Apologies and repudiations have been made:

Pope John Paul II

• In 1992 in Santo Domingo on the 500th Anniversary of Christopher Columbus landing there, Pope John Paul II confessed and begged forgiveness for the sins of the Church in the Spanish conquest of America.
• He repeated a similar confession March 12, 2000, when, kneeling at the Holy Doors of the Great Jubilee. He begged forgiveness for Catholics who had violated "the rights of ethnic groups and peoples, and [for showing] contempt for their cultures and religious traditions."

Pope John XXIII
Pope John XXIII's 1962 encyclical Pacem in Terris pointed toward the United Nations and its role in protecting human rights, says Fr. Michael Stogre, author of That the World May Believe: The Development of Papal Social Thought on Aboriginal Rights.

"Subsequent teaching, particularly from Vatican II on, has certainly abrogated that earlier teaching," Stogre said.

Pope Paul III
In 1537, Pope Paul III issued a bull Sublimus Dei in which he stated: "Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession…of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ.

And that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved."

This bull is controversial because it's unclear whether it was ever promulgated outside the Vatican.

In Medieval and Renaissance Europe it fell to popes to issue bulls, but it was the job of kings to promulgate and enforce them in their kingdoms.

Source

• newshub.co.nz
• edgenorth.ca
• catholicregister.org
• thespinoff.co.nz
• upstanderproject.org
• Image: thespinoff.co.nz

There will be roaring levels of commercial testosterone at this auction, and the Treaty of Waitangi's protective intent comes into play immediately in this scenario.

The Treaty was highly protective of Maori and their position as tangata whenua in 1840, their wellbeing, ownership rights, and cultural survival.

We should not be surprised in the digital age that its protections, in respect of the assumed royal prerogative (the right of kings, queens and parliaments to assert ownership over raw resources and the right to own and sell) reaches into areas like the spectrum resource. The courts have accepted that the Treaty deliberately placed a fetter over the prerogative in New Zealand.

Maori should not be blamed for the length and sharpness of those guarantees. Maori didn't write the Treaty nor initiate the migration and colonisation which necessitated it. They are entitled to cling to the contract their ancestors signed.

It's useful to remember that in all the claims Maori have made for spectrum in both broadcasting and telecommunications, they have displayed a clear idea of what they would do with spectrum and why it is needed. All have faced fierce Crown opposition and produced bitter fights in the courts.

In 1985 the Maori Council surprised the Government of the day by launching a bid for the third channel TV warrants before the Broadcasting Tribunal. The last national VHF network was at stake. The bid failed. Conventional wisdom of the time framed the Maori channel as an impossibility. Look at Maori Television now. A burgeoning success, but started 20 years after the main body of native speakers of the language passed into the night, along with the rich resources they would have provided. Continue reading

Sources

• Piripi Walker in The Dominion Post
• Image: Delimiter
  

Piripi Walker, Ngati Raukawa, is spokesman for Nga Kaiwhakapumau i Te Reo, (The Wellington Maori Language Board).