US & CHURCHES NEED TO PRACTICE WHAT THEY PREACH.

Mahalo to the Episcopal Church...for taking the lead.-------------------------Urges US adoption of UN DeclarationBy Gale Courey ToensingStory Published: Jul 27, 2009Story Updated: Jul 27, 2009ANAHEIM, Calif. – In a first-of-its- kind action in the Christian world, the national Episcopal Church has passed a landmark resolution repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery and urging the U.S. government to endorse the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.Organizers of the bill hope it will lead to the overturning of a 19th century U.S. Supreme Court ruling and Congress’ assumption of plenary power over Indian nations they say are illegitimate and immoral, and continue to strip American Indian nations of their inherent sovereignty.The resolution, called “Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery,” was passed unanimously by the Episcopal House of Bishops and by an overwhelming majority of the House of Delegates during the church’s 76th General Convention July 8 – 17 in Anaheim.“It’s a historic event,” said Steven Newcomb, Shawnee/Lenape. Newcomb is the indigenous law research coordinator for the Sycuan Education Department, co-founder and co-director of the Indigenous Law Institute, and a columnist for Indian Country Today.Newcomb’s work on the Doctrine of Discovery in his many essays and his 2008 book “Pagans in the Promise Land” is the spark that ignited individuals in the Episcopal Church to pursue the resolution.Newcomb expressed his “deep appreciation” for John Dieffenbacher- Krall, Brenda Hamilton, and John Chaffee “who powerfully advocated for passage of the adopted resolution.“Through the official action of an important religious institution in the United States, the document raises the visibility of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, while providing a means of educating people about that doctrine and its continuing effects on indigenous nations and peoples. The resolution is also important because of its focus on and endorsement of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”The resolution is also timely: The U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has called for a study of the Doctrine of Discovery and its historic and continuing effects on indigenous people to be completed by the forum’s convening in 2010.“The Episcopalian Church’s resolution will no doubt factor into that study,” Newcomb said.The Doctrine of Discovery was a principle of international law developed in a series of 15th century papal bulls and 16th century charters by European monarchs. It was essentially a racist philosophy that gave white Christian Europeans the green light to go forth and claim the lands and resources of non-Christian peoples and kill or enslave them – if other Christian Europeans had not already done so.The doctrine institutionalized the competition between European countries in their ever-expanding quest for colonies, resources and markets, and sanctioned the genocide of indigenous people in the “New World.”The resolution renounces the doctrine “as fundamentally opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and our understanding of the inherent rights that individuals and peoples have received from God,” and promises to share the document with its churches, governments within its boundaries, and the U.N.It resolves to eliminate the doctrine within the church’s contemporary politics, programs and structures, and urges the U.S. government to do the same. It asks Queen Elizabeth to publicly repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, and encourages all Episcopal churches to support indigenous peoples in their ongoing efforts for their inherent sovereignty and fundamental human rights as peoples to be respected.Johnson v. M’Intosh, an 1823 U.S. Supreme Court case, held that because of the Doctrine of Discovery American Indians have a mere right of occupancy to their lands. The ruling is foundational to federal Indian law.Dieffenbacher- Krall, the executive director of the Maine Indian Tribal State Commission and originator of the resolution movement, said the ultimate goal is to overturn Johnson v. M’Intosh, and dismantle Congress’ claim to plenary power over Indian nations.“This is illegitimate, this is immoral, this is evil. U.S. law shouldn’t be based on this. I want to see an all out effort to overturn Johnson v. M’Intosh just as the NAACP legal defense fund and many civil rights activists worked strategically to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson,” he said, referring to the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that upheld a “separate but equal” decision by a lower court that allowed Louisiana to operate separate railroad cars for African-Americans. The high court decision provided cover for southern states to impose racist Jim Crow laws for more than five decades until segregation was tossed out in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education.A longtime social justice activist, Dieffenbacher- Krall said his growing awareness and understanding of the doctrine’s history made action irresistible.“It’s not like I had a St. Paul on the road to Damascus moment, but sometime in the winter, spring or summer of 2006, I really became aware of the Doctrine of Discovery in connection to Congress’ claim of plenary power over American Indian nations.“So where’s the social justice behind Congress saying, ‘We’ll just do whatever we want with the Maliseets or Navajo or Hopi because we’re the U.S. and you’re not?’ I felt that because I have an uncommon knowledge for a white person about some of this stuff that I might have a role to play working in my church to make people aware of this.”Working with the Wabanaki tribes in Maine, reading Newcomb’s articles and later contacting him helped strengthen Dieffenbacher- Krall’s determination to act, and in October 2007, Maine’s Episcopal Church responded by passing a resolution calling on Queen Elizabeth and the Archbishop of Canterbury to rescind the 1496 charter given to John Cabot and his sons to go forth and claim possession of all the lands in the “New World” that weren’t already claimed by Spain and Portugal.Dieffenbacher- Krall also worked with Chaffee, a professor of Chinese history at Binghamton University and member of the Episcopalian diocese in Central New York, to pass its own similar resolution in November 2008, and with Hamilton, a Maine social worker, who worked with Chaffee to shepherd the national church’s resolution through the process in Anaheim.Chaffee crafted the resolution that was adopted at the general convention.The resolution has “a substantial practical value,” Chaffee said, because it could potentially “provide important legal ammunition in terms of pending and future legal cases that might be brought by Native Americans. I’m very happy to be just a small part of that whole process.”Hamilton was honored to be able to participate. In an e-mail update to her colleagues during the convention, she wrote, “My testimony rebutted the comment I have often heard about this issue, ‘What, are we trying to rewrite history?’ I said that to stand in any of the colonial churches of New England was a reminder that those churches stood on a history of the Doctrine of Discovery and genocide, thus there needed to be recognition of that both by the Episcopal Church and its colonial forbears in the Church of England.”
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  • 10 YANKEES IN PARADISE

    est, and beyond that the bare mountains., Mauna Kea and Mauna
    Loa, crowned with snow.

    Twenty-three land-hungry passengers leaned on the rail. Their five
    months' voyage was over. But what lay ahead of them?

    For the four Hawaiians a welcome after long absence seemed as-
    sured. But would Hawaii welcome the two ministers Bingham and
    Thurston? The physician, Dr. Holman? The assistant missionaries
    Loomis, Ruggles and Whitney? Would they welcome the wives of all
    these men, or farmer Daniel Chamberlain with his wife and five
    young ones?

    When Lucy Thurston, a few days before, had asked Captain Blan-
    chard whether he thought their lives might be taken by the natives,
    he had answered: "Aside from intoxication which sometimes leads
    them on to make bold assaults, I think not in any other way than
    by the use of poisons."

    With this cheering reassurance in mind, Lucy Thurston like most
    of the company still in her twenties looked across the strip of water
    to the place which she expected to make her home for life, whether
    that life be long or short. She could see the little thatch houses, look-
    ing more like haystacks than habitations. Here and there a column of
    smoke rose into the bright, cloud-studded sky. Someone brought out
    a telescope, and with its help men and women could be picked out
    "immortal beings purchased with redeeming blood."

    The question uppermost in every mind was whether these particu-
    lar immortal beings would allow this little handful of young men and
    women from New England to teach, preach and heal.

    "Your views are not to be limited to a low, narrow scale," the
    American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had admon-
    ished them. "You are to open your hearts wide and set your marks
    high. You are to aim at nothing short of coveting these islands with
    fruitful fields, and pleasant dwellings and schools and churches, and
    of raising up the whole people to an elevated state of Christian civi-
    lization ... to turn them from barbarous courses and habits . . and
    to inculcate the duties of justice, moderation, forbearance, truth and
    universal kindness."

    It was a large order, yet they had undertaken it in the conviction
    that they were in God's care and that if they could once get estab-

    Smith, Bradford "Social History Yankee In Paradise" 1956 JB Lippincott Company Philadelphia New York.
  • Kaohi,
    Mahalo for your comment. I'm not very versed in religion...although I went to many churches as a child. Our father wanted to expose us to many religions that we may choose for ourselves. Donna




    Donna,
    I am the least person to speak about religion because I see it as a wrecking ball to Hawaii National building which is what had occurred down at the Iolani Palace on July 4. American money 'in god we trust' a Haystack committee decided no more charity, but opt for capitalism from this point on Hawaii conjoined America (force fed) capitalism, in my opinion. Henry Opakaha'ia makes good reading on Hawaii's Christianity for da regulars numbered by 1870 14,850 or 25% of Hawaii's population most were pure blood Hawaiians

    "The sub and its 120-man crew left Connecticut in May and stopped in Florida and Georgia before passing through the Panama Canal. The sub arrived off Diamond Head yesterday morning." I nearly threw up when I read that the USS Hawaii came in from Connecticut because Henry Opukaha'ia coffin was returned in 1993--175 years later from Connecticut. This is just my crazy connection to a worm hole.

    My favorite part about Lacy---

    Charles Lacy Veach, NASA Astronaut a graduate of Punahou School, Honolulu, Hawaii in 1962, I believe was a religious person because of the many Hawaiian Heiau that were visible from the space shuttle. Why would he risk protocol and sneak an adz on board ship? He sent home a picture of an adz floating by the window on board the space shuttle and one clould see the Hawaiian Islands out the porthole. That's my religious moments.
    He died in 1992.

    Here is another piece of reading:

    Suppose we are passengers in a time machine that is taking us back to Hawai'i in the year 1750. As we hover above the islands and peer out of our windows, the first man-made objects we see, because of their size, are the fish ponds and the heiau, or temples. Of the two, we are most impressed with the heiau because of their great bulk, diversity in shape, and number. Literally hundreds of them, in all sizes and shapes, rise from the land. Passing over the Ahupua'a Pu'uepa in Kokoiki, North Kohala, on the island of Hawai'i, we gaze down at one of the largest of all heiau, the Mo'okini Luakini, with its huge stone walls, 30 feet high, 15 feet wide at the base and 13 feet wide at the top, built in the shape of an irregular parallelogram, about 250 by 125 feet along the sides. Including the sacred spaces outside the walls, the total area exceeds 10 acres. We marvel not only at the engineering skills that went into erecting such a massive structure, but even more at the power of the motivation that commanded the energies of the populace. More than fifteen thousand men, we are told, built the temple between sunset and sunrise of a single night centuries ago. Even if legend has exaggerated the capacities of our ancestors, we should ask what kind of conviction would impel them to raise such a testimony to faith. (Kanahele, p 31)

    In my early years, I watched my grandpa's church members build our church and it was done out of love for themselves and families, I believe. I grew up on the church grounds. So, do I have problems with the whole intentions of Chrisitianity in Hawaii, of course! It clouds the mind and interferes with political nation building, that's just my opinion. Mahalo Kaohi
  • Kaohi,
    I have never considered myself a "religious" person...preferring the word "spritual/of the spirit" knowing that there is a power much greater than myself and that there is in fact a way know right from wrong. I fear that many of the religions of the world have caused not solved problems. That being said...I'm a firm believer in doing what you say you'll do, and acting according to what you say you believe. I see that this is at least an ATTEMPT to go towards that.
  • Donna,

    I didn't get that Hamilton was sincere or in agreement with D-Kralls, therefore, the 'stand in' part included anything with 'Gospel of Jesus Christ' my grandparents church is "Gospel of Salvation" for they were protestants. It's the Haystack committee stuff.... Interesting reading Thanks Kaohi
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