Sarah and Sheri talk about Indigenous cosmology and how it differs from the Western worldview in ways that have led directly to our dominant culture having a distorted relationship with nature, with creation, and with the processes of life. Sarah constructs an Indigenous theology of creation based on Scripture. We talk about the difference between individual and structural sin, as taught by the Hebrew prophets and as interpreted through the rabbi Jesus. We contrast Indigenous cosmology and the prophetic vision with the “systems of death” that now run our world.

Sarah and Sheri continue to explore how Sarah discovered the Doctrine of Discovery and its impact on her life. Sarah tells the story about how she ended up working with the Indigenous Wayana people from the Guyana Shield in South America, who were being poisoned by mercury from gold mining and had no legal recourse to end this, due to the Doctrine of Discovery. She also tells the story of her father, who grew up in a religious boy’s school, and how she connected his story to that of thousands of Indigenous children who were placed in Indian boarding schools.

Sources:

• Chapter 4 in Sarah’s book, This Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery.
• Video library of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

For more information, go to dofdmenno.org, the website of the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Coalition.

During this episode, Sarah and Sheri explore how Sarah “discovered” the Doctrine of Discovery and its traumatic impact on her life and on the lives of other Indigenous people. They talk about how this trauma didn’t just happen but was intentionally planned by the U.S. government through different eras of federal Indian policy that systematically dispossessed Native people of their land.

Sources for this episode:

• Robert J. Miller book and article on the federal Indian policy eras.
• Steve Newcomb’s article on the Dawes Act in Indian Country Today.
• A historical exhibit from the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Coalition that covers federal Indian policy eras and how they intersect with Mennonite history
• Chapter 4 in Sarah’s book, This Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery.