After Christopher Columbus landed in 1492, the existence of Indigenous peoples in North and South America was forever changed. The historical trajectory of my people was altered too. Besides being subject to diseases like smallpox that we had no immunity to, we were starved, brutalized, and murdered. Millions of Indigenous people were slaughtered in the name of Manifest Destiny, born from the Doctrines of Discovery and in particular the 1493 Papal Bull.

The Papal Bull Inter Caetera, a solemn edict authored by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, gave Christians dominion over Indigenous lands and called for the subjugation of Native Indigenous peoples for the purpose of propagating Christian doctrine. In fact, Christians were charged with the duty of overthrowing Indigenous Nations in order to convert them to Christ, and Christian heirs were granted “full and free power, authority, and jurisdiction of every kind.” Those who attempted to controvert this Papal document were threatened with incurring “the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul.”

What this Papal Bull granted was right of conquest. Colonization began with Spain and Portugal, and every other Christian European power followed their lead. European invaders who stole Indigenous lands and lives were anointed with the ability to do so through the church, which was the foundation of state laws. Some three hundred years after Pope Alexander VI invoked deprimantur against my ancestors, John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, took the Papal Bull Inter Caetera principle of Right of Reduction, based on the Christian Latin concept of dominorum Christianorum, and made Christian dominion law vis-a-vis the invention of the Doctrine of Discovery. This Doctrine itself has no legal foundation. Using the reasoning of the Inter Caetera, the Supreme Court invalidated the Indigenous land claims of Natives whose ancestors had lived in North America for thousands of years and gifted title to American colonists who were governed by Christian leaders.