Summit of Nations 2006
August 2006 at Mato Paha: Bear Butte

Archived Audio Files of Summit of Nations,
Recinding of 1493 Papal Bull, Doctrine of Discovery
a-Infos Radio Project  http://www.radio4all.net/proginfo.php?id=19251

Audio and Video clips at: http://www.harmonic-engineering.net/

govinda's album : Photos from Bear Butte

Bring Back The Way "Revitalizing and Preserving the Lakota Way of Life"

DefendBearButte.org "Intertribal Coalition to Defend Bear Butte!"

Summit of Indigenous Nations August 1-4, 2006 at Mato Paha: Bear Butte
Hosted by the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council (the lakota, dakota, nakota people known historically as the Great Sioux Nation) of the 1868 Ft. Laramie Treaty Territory

Indigenous summit at Bear Butte asks pope for help

Rapid City Journal
By Journal Staff
Aug. 4, 2006
http://rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2006/08/04/news/local/news01.txt

BEAR BUTTE -- Tribal leaders and indigenous rights groups will ask the pope to rescind a 1493 Vatican document which they believe paved the legal road for Europeans to take land from indigenous American people.

Twenty-three organizations and 100 individuals signed a resolution Thursday at the Summit of Indigenous Nations at Bear Butte. The resolution, which will be sent to the Vatican for review, targets the Papal Bull Inter Caetera of 1493, in which Vatican officials urged Christopher Columbus to convert indigenous Americans to Catholicism.

"We command you in virtue of holy obedience that, employing all due diligence in the premises, . you should appoint to the aforesaid mainlands and islands worthy, God-fearing, learned, skilled and experienced men, in order to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents in the Catholic faith and train them in good morals," reads the 1493 document.

"This is going to be history in the making," Vic Camp announced before the resolution and a separate treaty amongst summit participants were signed.

The resolution equally targets the Queen of England and asks her to rescind a 1496 Royal Charter.

"It is with much honor that I put my hand on this instrument," Dennis Banks of the American Indian Movement said as he signed the resolution. "It's at least part of a solution. It's step one ... to pass this moment on to the next generation so they bear witness and we begin a new day."

Oglala traditional chief Oliver Red Cloud was the first to sign Thursday afternoon, followed by Floyd Hand, an Oglala elder and treaty delegate, and then the various indigenous entities.

Debra White Plume of Bring Back the Way, one of the summit organizers, said she experienced trauma attending Catholic boarding schools.

"I'm really proud to see (everyone) stand up against the people that said we weren't human," White Plume said. "We want our spiritual identity left alone."

The resolution states that the 1493 Vatican document and the 1496 Royal

Charter "represent principles of religious intolerance in its moral and legal implications" and served as a "doctrine of discovery," a legal foundation for the "extinguishment of aboriginal title to Indian lands in the United States."

"The doctrine of discovery established a legal paradigm that has caused crusades in the name of Christianity and great harm and injury to Indigenous Peoples throughout the centuries, including the members of Indigenous Nations gathered at this Summit," reads a section of the resolution.

In addition, the Mato Paha Treaty of 2006 was signed Thursday. That document will be forwarded to the United Nations. It recognizes a union among the Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council, the Northern Arapaho Nation, the Northern Cheyenne Nation, the Ponca Nation and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador.

Through this treaty, the five entities established peaceful relations among themselves "to maintain an effective and lasting peace" and other goodwill stances, including trade, support and defense.

According to Debra White Plume, the treaty will be sent to the United Nations in about one month. Bring Back the Way will take the lead and send in the treaty. However, the group "needs to package it appropriately," White Plume said. Attorneys will draft a cover letter before the treaty is sent. The group expects the U.N. to keep the document on file but expects no further action.

Western Shoshone Defense Project is a signatory to this important resolution.

Friday, August 04, 2006
PRESS ADVISORY, FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION

Summit of Indigenous Nations Sign Resolution to Rescind the Doctrine of Discovery (Papal Bulls of 1493)

When: August 3, 2006
Who: A delegation of indigenous nations and non-governmental organizations gathered at the Summit of Indigenous Nations at Bear Butte Mountain.
Where: Bear Butte Mountain, South Dakota
What:

Today is the third day of the Summit of Indigenous Nations, a gathering of more than forty delegations of indigenous, spiritual and political leaders, as well as NGO's who have gathered in the Black Hills Mountains of South Dakota. Today these delegations signed the "Resolution of the Summit of Indigenous Nations Calling for a Rescission of the Conceptual Doctrine of Discovery and Related Documents, Specifically the Inter Caetera Bull (Papal Bulls) of 1493 and the 1496 Royal Charter of the Church of England." This Papal Bulls have been the basis for the extinguishment of aboriginal title and the subjugations of indigenous peoples of Abya Yala (North and South America). The papal bulls evolved in the United States through the Supreme Court decision of Johnson v. McIntosh (1821) and contains the legal basis for the denial of aboriginal title to Indian lands in the United States.

The Indigenous Nations have resolved, here at the base of Mato Paha (Bear Butte), that the Pope of the Catholic Church and the Queen of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury rescind these doctrines of discovery as they have justified and paved the legal way for the dispossession of aboriginal land title and the subjugation of non-Christian people to the present. It has been resolved by 23 Nations and NGO's and 100 individual signatories that the "doctrine of discovery is a legal and political fiction in violation of the rights of Indigenous People's which has resulted in and continues to oppress indigenous people's in the Western Hemisphere.

Signatories included a cross-section of indigenous and non-indigenous organizations and nations including American Indian Law Alliance, American Indian Movement, Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council by Chief Oliver Red Cloud and Oglala Delegate Floyd Hand, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador and Bring Back the Way: Owe Aku and Tonatierra.

This Summit of Indigenous Nations has been called in response to the development of several new biker venues all located within five miles of the base of Bear Butte, near the Black Hills Mountains. Bear Butte is a sacred place of worship for over thirty Native American Nations across the Great Plains. The Native American nations involved are asking for a simple five acre buffer zone from the base of the mountain; however this is currently not being honored.

Contact: Gabrielle Roesch & Brian Cisneros
Cell: 206-818-8470
Gabrielle@thirdloop.org, Brian@harmonic-engineering.net
www.harmonic-engineering.net, www.earthcycles.net