Recovering from Discovery

Time to Renounce the Doctrine of Discovery

John Wesley preaching to native American Indians. Engraving. (via Wikipedia Commons)

When I wrote “Aboriginal Sin” in 2008, I was spurred by multiple aggravations but incited generally by the profound sense of how completely American society carelessly and even hostilely ignores the nation’s history of conquest and its subjugation of the land’s indigenous peoples. Every time I heard or read about slavery being the nation’s original sin, I felt – without, in any way, discounting that truth – a stunned reminder of the utter absence from the social conversation of the nation’s ab-original sin.

As a city dweller over my life, mostly in New York City but also many years in Los Angeles, I knew how missing Native Americans were from the public conversation, even though, in areas lik…