When we agreed to go to Phoenix, for General Assembly, we also agreed to do more acting on Justice and less business. However, our partners I Phoenix immediately asked us to learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery and eventually repudiate it. Our GA delegates to repudiate it last Sunday. Yeah!
http://www.uua.org/ga/2012/189502.shtml
I knew next to nothing before a week ago, about the Doctrine of Discovery. Shame on me as a delegate I did not explore it prior to traveling to Phoenix. Closely connected to this is a UN Declaration on the rights of Indigenous People, UNDRIP. I could encourage us to learn as much as possible about both of these documents.
As I understand it, the DOD has been in place for thousands of years. At its core, a country conquers another country and assume ownership of the land, and then control the indigenous peoples who were already there. It is what we did to the American Indians when Columbus arrived.
The American Indian partners were emphatic that we pass the responsive resolution repudiating the DOD and pushing the US to sign and implement the UNDRIP. Yes the acronym is DRIP. We are one of 4 countries who have not yet signed the Declaration. Does this sound familiar, the relationship and the lack of action on the part of the US with the UN? As long as I am using acronyms WTF!
SO last week, I read about the DOD and I got a copy of the UNDRIP on my ipad and read that during our discussion. I went to two great sessions where one of our partners, Tupac Acosta, an American Indian, spoke passionately about the DOD, the UNDRIP and how important our vote is.
There are not thousands of readers of my blog but those of you who get this far, might GOOGLE these two documents if you do not already know about them. This is important work our denomination is doing!
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