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Waking Up to “Original Sins”

of Christian Imperialism

Presented Oct 15, 2020

USC Province JPIC Reflection Group on Indigenous Issues

Molly Arthur, Associate, Society of the Sacred Heart, Ginny Dennehy RSCJ,

Mary Kay Hunyady RSCJ, Suzanne Lasseigne RSCJ, El MacLellan RSCJ

Deanna Rose von Bargen RSCJ

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El McLellan, rscj

Molly McGettigan Arthur, ascj

Deanna Rose Von Bargen, rscj

Ginny Dennehy, rscj

Suzanne Lasseigne, rscj

Mary Kay Hunyady, rscj

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(DR begins): AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

For 5 years I have been trying to finish reading this book, but it’s just such a profoundly sad story, that I can hardly finish it.

Until approximately 5 years ago, none of us in our group, neither the RSCJ nor our Associate, had been taught about the true 500-year history of our nation. From Kindergarten through graduate school, we did not hear about the Doctrine of Discovery. We did not hear that the United States’ 2 biggest “original sins” emanated from the institutional Catholic Church, and that the Protestant ethic carried them forward by believing and teaching that European immigrants were the new “Chosen People”, destined to exterminate and enslave the new-found and expendable “Canaanites” as the Hebrew scriptures had described.

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MA:

We want to start with an acknowledgement of respect for the indigenous peoples of this land right where we are sitting in the United States.

My name is Molly Arthur, I live on land that was cared for by original peoples, now called Coast Miwok, in Marin County, CA

GD:My name is Ginny Dennehy;

MK:my name is Mary Kay Hunyady;

SL: my name is Suzanne Lasseigne;

DR: my name is Deanna Rose von Bargen;

MK: we 4 live on land that belonged to the Ramaytush tribelet of the Ohlone peoples now called San Mateo County, CA.

My name is El MacLellan; I live on the land of the Mashpee/Wampanoag peoples in the state of Massachusetts.

EM: We honor the thousands of years that these Indigenous peoples lived in harmony with their environment, preserving this beautiful land on which we now live. In her book, Roxanne Dunbar claims that 15 million Indigenous peoples once inhabited this land; now, approximately 3 million people make up the more than 500 federally recognized Indigenous nations, and there are even more unnoticed and un-counted “urban” Indians.

https://native-land.ca/

http://www.ramaytush.com/

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GD: (do not read words on book cover): The author’s personal family history is typical of many:

Dunbar-Ortiz’s mother, most likely Cherokee, grew up orphaned by age 4. Her Irish father had been alcoholic. So Roxanne’s mother was often homeless and neglected as a child. Picked up on the streets in Oklahoma, she was placed in foster homes, where she was abused, expected to be a servant, and would run away. when she was 16 she married an 18-year old who also was a high-school drop-out. Roxanne was their 4th child. She grew up without much exchange with Native people. Her mother was ashamed of being part Indian, and died of alcoholism.

This verbal picture gives texture to the “pall” that hangs over many Indigenous peoples in the U.S., even as those who remain, heroically strive to rise up to reclaim their native cultures and pride that has been stripped from them.

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Oren Lyons on Doctrine of Discovery (6 minutes video) 2015

Native American Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy..

What, when, how and why of the Doctrine of Discovery

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?what kind of image do you want

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1455 – Romanus Pontifex, Pope Nicholas V ��Confirmed by Pope Calixtus III (1456), Sixtus IV (1481) and Leo X (1514) and became the models for subsequent bulls issued by Pope Alexander VI ( 1493)�

“to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ where so ever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit”

MK: or ma (do not read title of the slide, but only the quote)

Say: We begin, then, with the papal bulls of the 15th century. When explorers learned they could circle the globe without falling off edge of the world, lands previously undiscovered by Europeans came into view. Pope Nicolas V encouraged these explorers (now read from the slide):

“to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ where so ever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit”

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St Dominic presiding over the burning of heretics �c. 1213.�The Inquisition lasted roughly 700 years, the last person executed was in 1826 in Spain

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EM: The Slave Trade

The Doctrine of Discovery in the late fifteenth through nineteenth centuries, involved the movement of millions of peoples from one continent to another based on skin color. It created a vast slave-plantation complex that was an important cog in the modernization and globalization of the world economy.

Africans provided the bulk of labor in this new system of slavery, but American Indians were compelled to labor in large numbers as well. The European trade in American Indians was initiated by Columbus in 1493. Needing money to pay for his New World expeditions, he shipped Indians to Spain, where there already existed slave markets dealing in the buying and selling of Africans. He financed his 4 voyages with the money he made selling slaves.

https://www.lib.umn.edu/bell/tradeproducts/sugar

immigration patterns. http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist110/enslaved.html

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Enslaved populations in the Thirteen Colonies in 1770

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Manifest Destiny�

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Mound of buffalo skulls

EM: Largely during the 1870’s a plan was devised to starve the tribes into submission by killing all the buffalo of the Great Plains. Their hides were sold by private industry and their carcasses left to rot. It was the Government’s best hope for controlling Indians - making them poor by the destruction of their stock and then settling them on the lands allotted to them.

The Native Peoples from the mid-west and from the northwest used to meet each other on the Great Plains for seasonal buffalo hunts. The Indigenous Peoples, after thanking the animal for giving its life, used every part of it for aspects of their life. A few of these were: tent-making, clothing, food, fuel, medicine, paint, containers, cooking vessels, arrow tips, bow strings, ornaments, tools, eating utensils, and toys.

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/mandestiny.htm

http://soaw.org/resources/anti-opp-resources/108-race/482-what-is-white-supremacy

http://christianhegemony.org/the-doctrine-of-discovery-manifest-destiny-and-american-exceptionalism

https://www.shmoop.com/manifest-destiny-mexican-american-war/ideology.html

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Embedded harmful consequences-

creating climate chaos

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MA: Violence against the earth begets violence against women. The colonial values of patriarchy and capitalism exploit the land and exploit our women.

This beautiful young woman is Melina Laboucan-Massimo, a Lubicon Cree environmental activist, her tribal lands are the Canadian Tar Sands. She has lost a sister and cousin to violence.

She says:

‘The systems of patriarchy, capitalism, colonization, and imperialism are based on a system of power and dominance. When you have these types of systems governing the way a society lives, that’s how people are being treated on the ground. That’s how the Earth is being treated. Indigenous people have always known that. Our relationship with Mother Earth is an attempt to be reciprocal — the cycle of life, you know.” - give and take.

https://grist.org/climate-energy/making-the-connections-on-tar-sands-pollution-racism-and-sexism/

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St. Philippine Duchesne

brought the Society of the Sacred Heart to America in 1818.

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The only photo that the Society of the Sacred Heart has of any of the enslaved persons who worked for the school in Grand Coteau, LA. Eliza “LIza” Nebbit (1811-1889)

SL: This is the only photo the Society has, of any of the enslaved persons who worked for the school in Grand Coteau. “Lisa” Nebbit was given to the Sisters as an orphan child by the local bishop.

Philippine Duchesne and her 4 RSCJ companions came from France to fulfill Philippine’s dream of ministry with the Indigenous. The dream got somewhat side-tracked for many years by the directives of the bishop in charge. He needed French-speaking Sisters to set up schools for girls of the French immigrant families. By then all manual work in this part of the colonial South was done by enslaved persons. Thus the RSCJ became reliant on enslaved African families to make the bricks for building their schools and to do all field and in-house manual labor for the running of boarding schools. By the mid 1830’s, even though the pope had spoken out against slavery, an American bishop decreed that in the U.S. it was morally acceptable to “hold” enslaved persons so long as one did not sell them. Clearly the decision concerned the pressures of the firmly rooted economic system then in place. The harvesting and processing of cotton had become the main industry.

https://rscj.org/history-slaveholding

(Photo: Eliza “Liza” Nebbit (1811-1889) “Colored Child of the Sacred Heart, first slave what was brought in dis Convent by Mother Duchesne.” Eliza’s closing in a letter she dictated in 1880 to Rev. Mother Randall, Superior in New York.)

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MK: or ma-The words on the slide read: “Lest we forget...we know who we are and whose we are.”

These generous descendents are now assisting our Sacred Heart Family to transform structural racism within our Society institutions as well as within our personal lives. Two Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, Sisters Patty Chappell and Anne-Louise Nadeau, are facilitating a working group. The group is composed of “descendants” and other Sacred Heart Family, including RSCJ, Associates, alums, faculty, co-workers, and provincial staff. Both facilitators are skilled in anti-racism work. Please pray for all of us, that we may be able to move forward by the grace of God, our own hard internal work, and the help of our capable assistants. In the U.S., besides our own unconscious racist attitudes, there are so many senseless murders and unjust incarcerations, as well as classist dis-advantages in education and in hiring and wage practices, based on skin color.

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(Do not read the words on the slide)

EM: Here we move on to the RSCJ ministries with Indigenous Peoples. Even during the time of wholesale genocide of the Indigenous People and forced removals from their homelands, a new way of erasing the Indians was envisioned: “cultural genocide”. The Government’s attempts at “cultural genocide” were an effort at erasure by assimilation. Efforts to make Native persons assimilate progressed through various forms of schooling the children.

The Jesuits invited the RSCJ to “school” the girls of some of the Potawatomi nations that had been forcibly relocated to the territory of Kansas. Most were already Catholic. It was now the 1840’s and the RSCJ administered a school for these girls in what is now St. Mary’s, Kansas, for some 37 years, until 1879.

https://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/2013/native-american-education/history-of-american-indian-education.html

reference:

https://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/2013/native-american-education/history-of-american-indian-education.html

Mission Schools:

Congress passes the Indian Civilization Act, which authorizes up to $10,000 a year to support the efforts of religious groups and interested individuals willing to live among and teach Indians. The act leads many to found so-called mission schools, which increase in number until federal officials stop providing direct funding for them at the end of the 19th century. Some mission schools continue to operate today.

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(Do not read the words on the cover of the book)

MA: From what author Maureen Chicoine, ((Chick-one) RSCJ, was able to uncover and reveal in her book, GRAVE ON THE PRAIRIE, in spite of the usual “motherly” and kind spirit RSCJ are accustomed to extend to their students, their prejudices and biases concerning native culture and religion were apparently evident as well. History records approximately 60 schools like this one, in the U.S. and its territories in the 19^th century, funded by the U.S. Government, located on Indian land. And when the allotment and citizenship treaty in 1861 was passed, and the Potawatomi were once again forced to leave their homes, the RSCJ took possession of over 300 acres of the former Indian Reservation land. The Potawatomi divided themselves, most of the Catholic portion moved to Oklahoma. They had to give up their tribal affiliation to become citizens and receive their allotments at that time, and pay for their own removal to Oklahoma. It was a survival necessity. They became the current Citizen Potawatomi Nation, now one of the largest Indigenous Nation in the US with c. 14,000 members.

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(Do not read the words on the slide)

SL:Since the children remained close to their parents while attending a “Mission School”, the government project of eradicating the culture from the children did not succeed; and thus, after the RSCJ school at St. Mary’s closed, began the final, and very cruel era of “Government Boarding Schools”, of which some 365 across the country have been discovered, some lasting until 1970 and beyond.

An example is the first of these, set up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, on the model of a penal institution. Those set up in Canada were called “Residential Schools”. In both the U.S. and Canada, many of these schools were administered by religious congregations of priests, brothers, or sisters, both Catholic and Protestant. However, as far as we know, no RSCJ were involved in these later schools.

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(Do not read words on slide)

MK: or ma (Sherman School) One school had several dark dungeons in which children were placed in solitary confinement for a day or overnight, for some infraction. A woman shared this at a healing service. The woman said that, when she was a child, her mother, who had been to a Government School, used to lock her in a closet for hours in their own home, a punishment for disobeying. And so the victims of the Government Schools passed on their traumas to their children and future generations. There are many scarred native people among us today as a result of the historical traumas that have been passed down to them. We hear of higher rates of suicide, alcoholism, domestic violence, homicide, loss of self-worth, as long-term results of the “cultural genocide” of the Government Boarding Schools.

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DR (pic of native person sprinkling a stone marker) – (Trail of Death – Potawatomi commemoration)

We also hear of efforts to heal, to give mutual support, and great reservoirs of resilience! There are so many efforts to regain native cultures, including languages. Our group tries to be supportive wherever we can, sometimes attending healing services, supporting Native conferences and learning from them, supporting their efforts to save their sacred sites from being destroyed, walking with them, speaking out.

This photo is from the Potawatomi Trail of Death Commemorative 600 mile journey, in which members of the Sacred Heart family, including myself, participated in 2018. I recently lived on a reservation in southern California, and asked some of my indigenous friends, “How can we Catholic Sisters be with you now?” The answer : “Please, just listen.”

Most of you know that our Sister Marianna Torrano listened when some of the parents on the Soboba Reservation asked her to set up a school for their children. The children weren’t getting the attention they needed in the public schools. So she set up St. Jude Mission School & spent the past 25 years fund-raising to keep it going. Though RSCJ are not there any more, the school is still going. Thank you for the support so many of you have given.

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Winona LaDuke Anishinaabe activist, on Redemption (5 minutes) 2011

Blackowl and her baby born at Standing Rock

Water Protector Camp, October 12, 2016

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MA:

Now that I am a grandmother, I really identify with this painting of Mater as an elder, by Pauline Perdreau. I have committed to be an Associate of the Society to live the values and principles that have been gifted to me through the many years that I have been a part of the Sacred Heart Family.

l strive for redemption in the context that Winona La Duke so movingly narrates. I look to the charism of the Sacred Heart to inspire me and to my spiritual companions to guide me in a broken-open heart way. I want to move toward healing and restitution with our Indigenous relatives and for all creation, in RIght Relationship.

Blessings for all the Children of the Sacred Heart, your children, our children, so the future generations may thrive and flourish and be called Blessed. AMEN !

A Mater Litany

By the RSCJ Avila Community, Albany, New York

Mother of refugees, help them find a home among us.

Mother of those who are caught in war, give them again a tranquil life.

Mother of those who wander without country, give them new roots.

Mother of those whose families are separated, help them be joined again in love.

Mother of the unborn, give courage to parents bringing life into this world.

Mother of the abused, especially because of the pandemic, preserve them from violence.

Mother of all the suffering, free us from our pain.

Dear Mother of the invisible and the essential, we beg you to intercede for these essentials of a human life, surely the desire of the Heart of our God for all our sisters and brothers across the world Amen.

Images: Mater in the House of Saint John;( A Contemporary Rendering of Mater by Min-Ah Cho, 2015)