SPECIAL CHIEFS ASSEMBLY
December 9, 10 & 11,2014, WINNIPEG, MB Resolution no. 4612014
TITLE: Support for Rescinding the Papal Bulls of Discovery
SUBJECT: Reconciliation
MOVED BY: Chief Shane Gottfriedson, Kamloops Indian Band, BC
SECONDED BY: Bernd Christmas, Proxy, Indian lsland First Nation, NB
DECISION Carried bv Consensus
WHEREAS:
A. First Nations people and their descendants have suffered the effects of colonization by successive governments since before Canada was established based on a false doctrine of discovery – a doctrine which must be rescinded in order for healing and understanding between First Nations and Canada to truly begin.
THEREFORE BE lT RESOLVED that the Chiefs-in-Assembly:
1. Resolve to endorse, to support and to encourage the participation of its peoples in the Long March to Rome, a pilgrimage of Indigenous peoples worldwide to present a petition to Pope Francis l, seeking revocation of the two papal bulls Romanus Pontifex (1455)and Inter Caetera (1493), otherwise known as the Papal Bulls of
Discovery, for the following reasons:
- a. They were the “blueprint” for conquest of the New World.
- b, They provided moral justification for the enslavement and conquest of Indigenous peoples worldwide.
- c. They are an ongoing violation of contemporary international human rights law.
- d, Other communities currently struggling to save their lands are threatened by modern-day ideologies of
inequality anchored in the Papal Bulls of Discovery.
Certified copy of a resolution adopted on the 11th day of December 2014 in Winnipeg, Manitoba PERRY BELLEGARDE, NATIONAL CHIEF
