by Thomas Dahlheimer

Tony Castanha -a Jibaro activist with indigenous roots in Puerto Rico, who was the project director for the indigenous peoples delegation that went to the Vatican in 2000 calling for the revocation of the 1493 papal bull "Inter Caetera", recently contacted me to give his approval and support for my indigenous peoples rights activist initiative associated with my youtube video wherein I tear up a copy of the Papal Bull "Inter Caetera" in front of Anoka, Minnesota's Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Saint Stephen, located in the Dakota-Lakota-Nakota Indian's traditional/ancestral homeland.

Papal Bull "Inter Caetera" is a decree that was issued by Pope Alexander IV to Christopher Columbus by the Roman Catholic Church on his second voyage to the Americas along with the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, which sought to establish Christian dominion over the world and called for the subjugation of non-Christian peoples and seizure of their lands. The decree, which granted rights to land throughout North and South America to Spain, under girds much of international law today, as well as the Doctrine of Discovery that is enshrined in US federal Indian policy.

In 1999, Steven Newcomb, co-director for the Indigenous Law Institute, attended the National Catholic Gathering for Jubilee Justice, at the UCLA campus. A committee of Catholic laity drafted a petition titled, “National Catholic Gathering for Jubilee Justice: A Call for the Revocation of the Inter Caetera Bull.” The petition called upon Pope John Paul II to revoke the Inter Caetera papal bull of 1493. It was hand delivered along with Newcomb’s pamphlet “Pagans in the Promised Land” to Cardinal Mahony of the Archdiocese in Los Angeles, and to Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, Pope John Paul’s personal emissary to the Jubilee event.

Also, in 1999, Tony Castanha was invited to be on a panel at the Hague Appeal for Peace in the Netherlands to discuss the papal bulls. He drafted an essay for the occasion entitled, “Christian Universalism and the Movement to Revoke the Papal Bulls.” Nalani Minton (Kanaka Maoli - Hawai'i) and Steven Newcomb drafted “The Pu’uhonua Peace Pact” that, among other things, asks the world community to call for the revocation of the papal bull of 1493.

In 2000, a letter to the Prefecture of the Papal Household and to the Most Reverent Eminence Re is co-written by Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo, Diocese of Honululu, and Tony Castanha, Project Director for the Matsunaga Institute for Peace – requesting a private audience with Pope John Paul II on Wednesday 11 October 2000.

Also, Steven Newcomb contacted me to thank me for my Indigenous Peoples Literature article Restoring the fundamental human rights of Indigenous Peoples.

 source reference link  

My letter from the PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE is located at http://www.towahkon.org/Vatican.html