MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: We are living in a time of great change, and it's critical for us to come together as one human family, so that all of our grandchildren, many greats into the future, will be able to enjoy life here on Mother Earth.

♪ May Rematriated Voices create space within your heart and mind to join with Indigenous thought leaders and allies.

We've been brought here together for a reason, and it's up to all of us to figure out why.

♪ Welcome to "Rematriated Voices".

I'm your host Michelle Shenandoah.

Wolf Clan member of the Oneida Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

On this episode of.

"Rematriated Voices," Indigenous women are working alongside allies to educate the public about the Doctrine of Discovery, the political and legal justification for the colonization of Indigenous lands across the planet.

I'm joined by Mohawk Bear Clan Mother Louise McDonald Herne better known as Mommabear, Mohawk attorney and educator Beverly Jacobs, and Sarah Bradley and Brittany Koteles from Land Justice Futures.

♪ Today we have with us Beverly Jacobs, Mommabear Sarah Bradley and Brittany Koteles.

Welcome, and we are so grateful you are here.

Today we will just delve into some very deep conversation about the Doctrine of Discovery, why people need to know about it what can they do about it, and what are actions Indigenous women are taking to address the Doctrine of Discovery?

With that, we have our Indigenous contingency here, and we also have our allies from Land Justice Futures.

Sarah and Brittany, you have founded an organization called Land Justice Futures.

Would you tell us what is your organization's mission and how do you bring it to life?

BRITTANY KOTELES: Thanks, Michelle, it's good to be here.

Land Justice Futures is an organization that we've been running for about three years now, and we work with Catholic sisters who are making decisions about their land and we work to transform those discernments into a journey of land justice.

So what that means is centering racial and ecological healing expanding who governs and loves the land, to be the people who have been most impacted by colonization and to support sisters in pursuing futures of the lands that they love that really put that at the center.

And I'll just say the one of the reasons why we do this is that the Catholic Church is the largest private landowner in the world, and was one of the main drivers of the project of colonization.

And these sisters, many of these communities, are at a point where their numbers are growing smaller.

They're growing older.

The average age of a Catholic sister is 82 years old, and so they are at this moment of letting go of a lot of the life that they've known and in particular, they're making decisions about land.

And so we come in to say, what if this moment of letting go could also be a culturally powerful moment teaching the world, so much of the over culture, how to let go of a paradigm that hasn't served anyone.

So on the ground level, we work with communities who are making decisions about land, and we work to find Indigenous stewards who can come back into relationship with that land, and we support sisters to go about that looking at the link between colonization, the Church climate change, etc.

How to do that holistically?

And I think on the air level or the higher level, the work is about culture change.

It's about changing, changing the story, and empowering people inside an institution that's done so much harm to tell a different story of.

what's possible.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah, the two of you do a considerable amount of work to educate folks on the Doctrine of Discovery, and yet a lot of people have no idea what the Doctrine of Discovery is.

So what is the Doctrine of Discovery?

Why do people not know about it?

And why should they care?

SARAH BRADLEY: Well, first it's intimidating to answer this question with the three of you but I'll share what you know we have learned in this process and what we really share with sisters in the in the communities that we work with.

The Doctrine of Discovery is an active legal doctrine that is a foundation to US property law to this day, and US notions of sovereignty to this day that is rooted in extremely racist and Christian supremacist ideas that were promoted by the Pope in the 15th century.

So the Doctrine of Discovery was really initiated by a set of Papal bulls or letters from the Pope that really invited European nations at the time that were nascent in growing their own empires to go out and conquer, and to go out and conquer in the name of Christianity, and to do that based on the premise that European Christians were superior and were favored by God and therefore deserved and deserved the land, deserved to govern the land, to be in power.

And it's these false notions that really have become embedded in our culture and even in our in our world view.

For many, many Americans today The notion of what it means to be an American is very much rooted in some of these ideas of of conquest and expansion, based on this.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Why do people not know about it?

SARAH BRADLEY: You know, I think that a lot of people think of the idea of, you know, America and Manifest Destiny, and like, you know this being God's Country when the settlers came is something that people take to be inevitable, rather than created by people in a moment of time rather than created by specific people with specific power political power at that time.

And when we recognize that, we recognize how constructed it is and therefore it can be unconstructed.

What's made by us can be unmade.

And so I think it's, it's hidden in plain sight, you know, like this is, this is, you know foundational to US property law lawyers learn about it in some of their first US property law classes.

And yet it's not examined.

It's not examined for "Wait a minute, why are these letters from a pope the basis of land rights in the United States?

Why are they the basis of why some people have power and some people don't?

Why do we give them credence?

Why do they give them power? "

Because we're doing that with our consent and with the consent of those who are still in power today and govern the United States.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah, thank you.

Thank you for that.

BRITTANY KOTELES: I love you, you're brilliant.

Just to drill a little deeper into what we're talking about when we say these, these papal bulls held this, you know, gave sort of made the call to go.

The literal wording is calling on Christian leaders to.

"to vanquish, conquer, capture and subdue non-Christian people... SARAH BRADLEY: ...and to reduce them to perpetual slavery."

BRITTANY KOTELES: So they say "Pagans and Saracens", but they're saying non-Christian people, and they use this term "terra nullius," which means "empty land".

So they say "go any land that doesn't have a Christian flag planted on it is empty and open to discovery, and why that's so important...when Sarah's saying this is what lawyers in their first -- law students learning how to become lawyers in their first property law class, one of the first cases as you know, as a lawyer that everyone studying to be a lawyer in this country learns is 1823, Johnson versus McIntosh, which is a is the first property dispute to be heard by the Supreme Court.

And literally it says -- What is it?

Oh, Discovery overlooks all proprietary rights of the Native... BRITTANY KOTELES: "Discovery by the European Nation overlooks all proprietary rights in the Natives," and that is citing - the US Supreme Court judges were looking for legal precedent to justify land theft and what they cited was the papal bulls.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: So Mommabear, the first time you heard about the Doctrine of Discovery, how did you feel?

MOMMABEAR: The first time that I heard it was probably back in 2003 when I heard Oren Lyons bring that to light at a youth and elders gathering, and I sat there in dismay and it followed me home, and I could not believe that that kind of poisonous thinking exists in the world.

So, you know, that haunted me and I couldn't sleep.

And so I'm like, well, how can I flip the table on this thing called Manifest Destiny and Doctrine of Discovery.

And I went into this place of going within and understanding how the Haudenosaunee matrilineage works, the maternal order, the Mother line and I just start writing away.

And came up with this Mother Law.

Because the first Europeans didn't realize that they were stepping onto a hemisphere of women, of Mother.

And to me, Mother is vital necessary, and the world can't exist without her.

The Doctrine of Discovery is out of order, and it has no standing, and everything that comes from human thinking is null and void, because the Indigenous perspective comes from a place of natural order.

The Mother is natural from the sunrise, the moonrise to the moonset and the sunset to the river flowing, to the grass growing, all of it is natural order, and that is law.

So the Mother is here to nourish, nurture, to bring balance and to give life, and to me, that is the tallest order in any society.

But these laws of...man-made laws have done everything to oppress her.

And I think now we're stepping into this moment where the Mother has to bring honor back to our men and not be afraid to correct them, and this Doctrine of Discovery has got to go, and it's been very detrimental.

And now that, especially with the 250th birthday coming up for the United States, it's still perpetuating itself on a lie.

It's a lie.

People been living a lie, and it has to come to the forefront.

So basically, you know, my reaction to the Doctrine of Discovery, is I was pissed still pissed, and from the position of a clan mother within our nation, and to think of all the women that were part of the destruction, you know, and how their voices got diminished, and they're, you know, relegated to the shadows.

No more, no more.

We're gonna venerate her back to her rightful place.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah, thank you.

It's like confirmation, with this beautiful breeze that's coming through, and just the sounds of nature is just responding, and, you know supporting this message that's coming through.

Beverly, you are a Haudenosaunee lawyer, and you're also a practicing lawyer in Canada, and the Doctrine of Discovery has had impacts.

Can you talk a little bit about the impacts on Indigenous peoples in Canada and even worldwide?

BEVERLEY JACOBS: It isn't any different in Canada in teaching about law and property law, and that the Doctrine of Discovery and the first case, the McIntosh case is also one of the first cases that's taught in property law in Canada too.

It's still the underlying basis of property law.

And it's the underlying basis of how law has been imposed in both Canada and the US.

So whether it's constitutional law, property law, criminal law everything underlying it is the Doctrine of Discovery, because it was about the control over land and it was control over people, and especially Indigenous people, that was the whole intention.

Was to try to erase us as a people, because we were so connected to the land, and there was no recognition of who we are as a people, that we have our own ways of being, that we have our own legal orders, that we have our own ways, you know, of of how we live, with ceremony, with language.

There was that whole superior/inferior...infused into everything.

And so the impacts, impacts are huge in the sense of even how we think about ourselves, how we And so the impacts, impacts are huge in the sense of even how we think about ourselves, how we think about who we are and where we come from, and how far away we are from practicing our own laws, and even our own people's belief that Colonial law is the answer to everything and so, so now it's like, it's like we're in this space of understanding, it, understanding and what we're trying to educate in the public about how it has had such a huge impact on everyone.

So I would say on men, on our women, on our knowledge holders on our children, on our youth like just our roles and responsibilities as Indigenous people, as Haudenosaunee people was part of our living together our, you know, just our collective we think of things in more of a collective way of thinking, whereas in this whole Doctrine, it was about commodity.

It was about resources individual thinking, individual ways of being, and based on patriarchy.

So like way the laws that were also imposed on Indigenous people is to is also to say that we have, we have no we have nothing like that Terra Nullius meant that we were nothing.

We were not human.

We were not connected to the land.

We had no understanding like we thinking that we were really stupid people, and from my understanding and growing up, we're pretty brilliant people.

And maintain, not only over the years and how we've been able to maintain who we are, our language is still intact.

It may be impacted.

Our laws are impacted, but it still exists.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: It's a process of unlearning right?

Learning to unlearn, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So this is a question out to anyone in 1823, as we've noted here, the US Supreme Court invoked the Doctrine of Discovery in the Johnson V McIntosh case.

The Doctrine of Discovery is still valid law to this day in the United States, in Canada and it's made its space, its made its way in other places around the world.

So my question in 1823 Why did the court invoke the Doctrine of Discovery and what has been its effect?

SARAH BRADLEY: Well, I think one of the one of the answers to that question is that the, you know, nascent United States wanted more land.

It wanted to expand westward and it concocted this case knowing that the way that they set it up, it was a setup, would invalidate, in their colonial legal system, the sovereignty of the land vested in Indigenous nations, and that it would consolidate the power to annex that land into the US government.

It essentially said, people can't, you know, trade and negotiate within Indigenous communities land, you have to go through us.

And so I think it was a consolidation of power move and an attempt to try to open up within their own colonial legal framework, the idea that they were the arbiters of who owned land, right?

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Absolutely, and from the US government perspective, they are the trustees of all Indigenous land in their mind, the way that they see it, but according to us and our people, it's not that way, but that's the way that the law behaves.

Right?

MOMMABEAR: It's an illegitimate assumption of superiority, and it's false.

It can't be more further from the truth.

But when you talk about deed to the land, and in Haudenosaunee philosophy, we talk about the Seventh Generation.

So to me, the deed lies in the mothers of our nations, and the clear title to the land rests in the ovaries of our young mothers.

And to me, that's undeniable.

It's not concocted.

It's not made up.

It's the biology, biological essence in their connection to the earth.

And if you're an Indigenous woman and you got active ovaries and you're in a state of fertility, you're the title holder of the land, and that's clear, and we understand that.

So decisions about the land are not made unless the mother is involved in that decision, and it cannot be seeded or sold unless she signs it away.

And never in the history of this hemisphere have mothers or women signed that away.

So to me, it's just a perpetuation of a continued lie that positions this illegitimacy of "power over" and it needs to be corrected.

It's a concoction of their own thinking that that needs to be corrected.

And Mommabear is here to say it's time.

The Mother's back in the house.

BEVERLY JACOBS: I just want to, just want to add, because my Eurocentric legal brain and my Mommabear, Mohawk Bear Clan connection... So when we talk about colonial law in these cases that are the Doctrine of Discovery, I know we're going to talk about how it was applied currently in Oneida Nation, it's the players in that system that still allow it to continue because it's a systemic colonial, legal, Eurocentric system that has had control, not only systemically, legally, and have established these laws that we know is not right.

We know is not is not legal.

They're not legal according to our laws.

So then we have a conflict of laws.

We have a conflict, right?

So in order for conflict to be resolved, there has to be commonalities.

So let's say when we have a conflict and we have a mediator, somebody that comes in to try to resolve it.

There has to be that common understanding about Mother.

There has to be a common understanding about Mother Law.

There has to be a common understanding about Mother Earth and what they were trying to do according to the Doctrine of Discovery, and what their intentions were.

Again, it was all about greed.

It was all about erasure.

It was all about inhumanity.

They killed our people.

That was the whole intention.

MOMMABEAR: It was a genocide.

BEVERLY JACOBS: It was a genocide, and it's been documented.

Enough.

We shouldn't have to go back to do that, because it's already been done.

It's well, what are we going to do about it now?

And so then, you know, if we're going to talk about this conflict, that is systemic, they need to listen.

They need to listen to what we're saying, because it's about it's about our future, all of us as humans.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Would you talk about...how is the Doctrine of Discovery directly related to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Peoples?

BEVERLY JACOBS: Yeah, that's the whole Doctrine of Discovery is about violence against Indigenous people.

That was the whole intention and violence against the land.

And so there's been missing Indigenous women since colonization, women have been disappearing, just the whole idea of women as leaders, wmen as decision makers.

That was the whole intention was to erase the women first, to get them out of the way so we don't have any more babies.

We won't have any more future.

You get rid of the women, you don't have any more any more conflict.

And it's so unbelievably sad just thinking about the numbers of Indigenous women who are not only murdered for who they are, as Indigenous women, but also those who go missing, and we also know that they get thrown back into Mother Earth.

They got thrown into the waters with no respect to-- It's like there's no words to explain it, how devastating that is when you think about the relationship of our women to our families, to our communities, to our children, and the erasure that that does to generations.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: And the law has upheld a lot of these actions or inactions to investigate, to look into this.

And so much of it is rooted in the fact that, especially among the Haudenosaunee, women are the ones to make the decision regarding the land.

And so in the way of expansion and settling in the country, by the colonists and the settlers who came here, who's in the way?

Indigenous women, right?

And so that has so much to do with how these are connected.

I know that you've been very involved with issues regarding you know, your land, for your nation, and even going back to the Oneida case, right?

That case, that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you know, cited into cited the Doctrine of Discovery in 2005 that shut the door for land claims for all Haudenosaunee, and my great grandmother, she was one of the early women, you know, one of those early mothers to the Land Back Movement, if you will right, who wrote to the government?

She spent her entire life writing to the US government about the lands of the Oneida people that were that was illegally taken, and that it was only right that we should have a place to live and to be who we are as Oneidas, and so that 2005 case closed the door on that.

That was the first year I started law school.

I was following in my grandmother's footsteps and to work on our land claims.

I didn't know what to do.

I stayed in law school, and through, you know, some really wonderful folks, I met a Quaker woman at one of the speeches that I gave, and I was telling her about how our Oneida people we were, we were forcibly broken apart and relocated.

So some of us are still in the homelands, some are in Canada some are in Wisconsin, and we we've been disconnected from each other, MOMMABEAR: That's right, and the Oneidas were probably the most patriotic to the United States, and they helped geographically shape what is the United States and Canada but the United States betrayed you's.

Yeah, they betrayed you.

They promised you land and then displaced you, yeah, but that's the falsehood, right?

And that's the Doctrine of Discovery at work in its superiority, right?

So, man, Oneida, Oneida, you know, it's like, Where, where where is the story that tells how you's helped the United States win that war?

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah, yeah.

MOMMABEAR: It's invisible.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: It is invisible.

And you know, the Oneidas we were promised that our lands would be forever protected by George Washington himself.

Who also, at the same time turned around and burned all the fields of food, you know, of so many of our Haudenosaunee nations.

And so there's always just been this inherent conflict, right?

You know, where the US and with or the colonists would say we'll be your friend and we're going to be your enemy at the same time, right?

And yet, at the same time, so many people just are not even educated on that history, the names of our ancestors, they're not mentioned in the texts that students learn about the history of the US or Canada or global history, right.

There has been a groundswell of Indigenous scholars and traditional practitioners who are bringing Indigenous thinking into law and into scholarship and we see it happening, right?

And so I would just like to ask what are some of those changes some of those Indigenous- centered policy and scholarship changes that you see happening here in Turtle Island, right, or around the world?

BEVERLY JACOBS: In the academic institutions there's been a lot of...there's a lot of work with Indigenous scholarship, Indigenous scholars who are hired in the institutions and really trying to make a shift even in the education system.

But now we're having to educate the institutions.

It's like government.

It's kind of like government where they're, you know, you have a hierarchy.

You have a systemic, colonial institution with a bureaucracy.

So it's like you have to educate everybody all the way up, all the way up the hierarchy.

It's the same thing, because there's still very racist people throughout the institution who are making decisions that cause barriers to our people.

But then I see with all that education that's happening, that there's, there's a little little shifts that are being made with Indigenous people Being part of the institution.

So for me, so being a law professor, being a lawyer, being an advisor to the President of the University of Windsor, you know, it's been a lot of battles.

I'm going to call them battles because it's a fight.

It's a continuous fight to not only to educate, but to get them to understand about just basic basic Native studies 101, like who we are as a people like just basic stuff.

And it's frustrating every day.

So I see it happening, like really slowly, with the younger generation, and I can see it.

That's where I see the shift happening because, like they're in their 20s and when I look at the comparison between what's happening in our communities and our young people are learning and revitalizing and reclaiming.

And then with the non- Indigenous, they're also learning and becoming educated.

And so then, then it'll be easy for us who are trying, who have been trying to fight this for such a long time, and trying to bring this awareness for such a long time, that I'm hoping that it'll be easy for them, it'll be easy for them to understand and make those changes and shifts that need to happen in what we're talking about, in the relationship to the land and relationship to each other, and to me, I always think about Guswenta and the Two Row, and think that is going to that is going to be real because that relationship was about love and kindness and compassion and truth and trust, and that we're going to live together and thinking about things in the future And so to me, that's always what I think about.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Would you explain the Guswenta?

BEVERLY JACOBS: So Guswenta, so it's a two row wampum belt that was made between our ancestors Haudenosaunee, between them and us, and the early colonizers with the Dutch, the French, the British and the US, and the intentions of that.

So it's two lines on the belt and Guswenta literally translates into "River of Life".

So that in their ship, colonial ship, our canoe, are supposed to live together, not interfering in each other's ways of life with three basic principles: peace, trust and friendship.

And so if we are to live with those principles, then like perpetually that's what I'm thinking, that if we're living with those principles in mind and our relationships, it's a healthy relationship.

That's what the whole intention of that Guswenta, was to have healthy relationships and that we would live together in the future without interfering in each other's ways of being, and that we would maintain our sovereignty, our self- determination, whatever English term we want to call it, but it's our ways of being, right?

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah, and Mommabear, you talk about the Guswenta, the Two Row and what holds both of those vessels?

MOMMABEAR: Well, you can't have a vessel, a floating vessel, without water to float in.

And in our way, the water is feminine.

The water is feminine.

It's got female qualities.

So to me, again, that is Mother Law in its application in that first original treaty between the first Europeans and the Indigenous people upon this land.

So to me, that's the bond, or the element of connectivity.

She's the glue.

Yeah, she's the glue.

But, you know, European patriarchal law made a woman a possession.

That's why you take your father's last name or your husband's last name, and so that's the mistake, that's the mistake that women fell into that but until we begin to take back our names, take back our land, take back our children take back our bodies, we're always going to be somebody's possession.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: So this leads me to ask you a question, Beverly, thinking about as Haudenosaunee people we center our way of life around what we call the Great Law of Peace.

And in Western law, it's very much centered around rights under the Great Law of Peace.

We have responsibilities.

So from these two different perspectives, can you just, can you discuss and describe the distinction between rights and responsibilities?

BEVERLY JACOBS: I grew up understanding the Great Law, understanding about the Confederacy, the governance was enacted under the Great Law and how the Confederacy works the relationships amongst nations, the role of our clan mothers, and the relationship with her male leadership: It was always about balance.

And so and everybody had a has a responsibility, whether it's to our families, to our nations, to our clans.

And everybody has a responsibility.

It's all it's all part of the establishment of the Confederacy.

And so clan and nation.

So when you're born into a clan you know what your responsibilities are.

You know what your responsibilities are, to your family, to your clan, to your nation and to the Confederacy.

So it's a huge we all have a huge responsibility.

So it's a huge we all have a huge responsibility.

It's related to also to the land, when we talk about the Thanksgiving Address, like that too, is also part of understanding our relationship to the natural world.

In law school, we learn about this liberal understanding about law and that everything is based on this individual aspect which is what rights comes from.

And so rights became part of the language even our own people started to use: "I have a right to hunt.

I have a right to fish.

I have a right to my language.

I have a right to where I live.

I have a human right to have a...." You know, all these rights, standards that came, but they came under colonial law.

So that's why I say "Rights came with their ship.

Responsibilities came with our laws."

And so if you're looking at the Two Row, and you're looking at how they were supposed to work together, their rights and responsibilities are also supposed to be balanced and working together.

So then if I have a right to fish, I not only have a responsibility to the water, I have a responsibility to the fish.

So it's not just I have that right to hunt also.

I have a right to those animals.

I have a responsibility.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah, yeah.

Thank you, Mommabear.

Let's talk about 2022 MOMMABEAR: March, 2022 Michelle Schenandoah: And you send me a text message that says, "Would you like to go to Rome to meet the Pope? "

Rome, New York?

What is she talking about?

So you sent me to the Vatican, along with one of our sisters, and I was asked to address the Pope, along with an Indigenous delegation who we traveled with to talk about the abuses that happened at Indian residential schools that was directly under the hand of the Church.

And in addition to that, to also ask him to rescind the Doctrine of Discovery.

And so we know that didn't happen.

It still hasn't happened.

And the Pope came to Canada to formally apologize to the Indigenous peoples, and we still stayed connected to this whole entire process.

And when the Pope came to Canada and came to Quebec City, we had a Haudenosaunee delegation that you and I were a part of, and we were told that we would have time with the Pope, and that as the Indigenous leaders yourself and the other leaders who were with us, would have time while he is on our land, right?

But that didn't happen.

The Pope met with all the Canadian officials that were present at this event we went to, and all the Indigenous leaders that were there was completely ignored.

That's right, yeah, I have a question for you which is, you know, what would have happened if the church had kept its word and met with our Haudenosaunee people, and what would have been the protocols that the Pope would have experienced?

MOMMABEAR: He would have experienced coming into the territory of the Haudenosaunee.

And that's debatable, whether Quebec City is Haudenosaunee or not, but we pretty much controlled the whole St Lawrence River Corridor, right from the mouth of the St Lawrence all the way down into the Great Lakes.

He would have had an Edge of the Woods Ceremony, and they would have done an unburdening of his travels, and they would have permeated his consciousness with peace and good will.

But that didn't happen, and I know that we were on the agenda on the morning of, because I had a whole speech prepared, you know, an hour before I was told I got removed from the agenda that our leaders got removed from the agenda.

And so it was -- we were just the window dressing to this visit that he did in Canada, and I know that you were also window dressing to the Vatican, so instead of having to address the ills that their faith has inflicted upon the planet, he'd rather ignore it.

So to me, it's a river of denial that the Pope showed us that day, and it showed to me that really, he's just a man controlled by all the bishops and cardinals.

And I know we had dinner with them, and they continue to feed off this illegitimate assumption of superiority.

And my good friend Sally says, "I'm a recovering Christian", you know, trying to get away from those codes of domination.

And so looking at what happened in Quebec City, it was just the Pope and his entire monstrosity of a parade that was going on was to just show the world again that he can exert power over Indigenous people.

That was upsetting.

But a debt needs to be paid.

A debt needs to be paid because there's been a theft.

There's been a theft of humanity, and that needs to be paid.

You know, when I went to see the Pope, of course, you know, I always struggle with my anger, and one of my elders says, We gotta love the Pope.

We gotta love the Pope.

I don't want to love the Pope but I had to be civil, and I was sitting like from me to you in front of the Pope, but I didn't exist.

He didn't see me.

He didn't see me.

I might as well have been invisible.

But to me, I was just the window dressing to their code of dominance.

And when you talk about how things are shifting, you know, I think perhaps one of the biggest shifts that I felt is these ladies over here, they get it and they want to own it.

They are owning it you know what I mean.

And to me, that speaks to the integrity of our allies, that there still really is good thinking, good-hearted, good you know, just good people.

You're returning honor to your people, you know.

And to me, that's beautiful because it shows me that there is humanity in the inhumane.

So I thank you for that.

It's beautiful.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Yeah, it was really beautiful.

Back in December 2023, the five of us, along with other -- MOMMABEAR: You, dragged me to that.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: And aren't you so happy because you met these two?

MOMMABEAR: She goes "Come on, we're gonna go spend a weekend with some nuns".

I said "Nuns?!

", You know, when you get beyond your own wall of conflict, you see something beautiful on the other side of fear, something really beautiful.

And I had to get beyond that, so I thank you, young ladies for showing up.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: So right here with this group, along with some other Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, activists, traditional practitioners, we met in Oneida lands, in Haudenosaunee territories where the Doctrine of Discovery was cited against my people, right?

And there we brought our minds together, and from here, have launched Mother Law and Complicit No More as a campaign right?

So with the two of you who are leading this now as a course of study and action that people can engage with, can you talk a little bit about what is this campaign and how can people become involved?

SARAH BRADLEY: In order to make things right we have to realize when they're wrong, that they're wrong.

And I think one of the main things that is stopping us from being able to have the kind of togetherness and seeing what needs to happen for us to have a livable future, for us to honor the Mother again, is this denial that things are, that the way things are isn't working and is inhumane and is destroying the planet, and so Complicit No More is really a campaign to support people in recognizing the Doctrine of Discovery all around us and the impacts that it has on our families, on where we live, on our family histories on the wealth distribution in this country, on the distribution of power and the way things work.

You know, it's really in the fabric of our society so deep and in order to remove our consent from these domination codes, we first have to see it and we have to feel it.

We have to grieve it and in that space can be open for actually making a very different choice.

And it's a choice that has to really go deep into like our own sense of who we are.

And I think that is your invitation to Mother Law.

We need to reanimate the Mother Law traditions that we carry in ourselves and our own lineages and we need to stand in power together.

And I do think this is work that we're doing primarily with white women right now, in terms of the people that we're working with because there's a particular responsibility as people who have benefited in many, many ways from this colonial setup from the Doctrine of Discovery we actually need to remove the poison from ourselves first, in order to be good allies, in order to be good accomplices and in solidarity with this new this other path forward.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: As we're bringing this to a close, we've formed a friendship.

We've formed an alliance and a campaign to make real change right?

So what do you all believe is like the most important lesson people can learn about creating meaningful relationships with Indigenous peoples and creating alliances.

MOMMABEAR: I think the world in this moment rests in how we propel ourselves forward.

But you know, in the Haudenosaunee way, knowledge ain't yours until you share it and we have a huge responsibility to the next generation.

Because, you know, I don't want to leave them the mess.

I want them to have something to look forward to, and I want them to appreciate life as it should be.

But we have to get rid of this domination code and this warmongering mindset that continues to cloud our happiness.

SARAH BRADLEY: We have to do this work, not only because it's the right thing to do, not only because of healing and wholeness that's possible, but also because this feels existential, like if we aren't able to do this... life as we know it will no longer be possible.

And life's...for so many life forms will no longer be possible, Like we got to get -- this is how I feel about it, which is really intense, I recognize, but I really -- It feels so imperative because we're living in a polycrisis.

Whether you're looking at environmental destruction or housing, or you're looking at political violence, or, you know, domestic violence, or any any of these things.

It feels so connected to this Gordian knot of the original sins of this nation, if we'll call it that, of the Doctrine of Discovery, and it's not just for, you know Indigenous people, or the descendants of settlers.

This is important for everyone.

This is important for everyone.

This is all of our lives.

And you know, the Doctrine of Discovery enabled Indigenous land theft, the Transatlantic slave trade, the colonization of 84% of the land on this planet and so this is important for everyone from Singapore to Cape Town to the land of the Mohawk.

MICHELLE SCHENANDOAH: Wow.

So grateful to each of you for our time together, and we have to take action.

If there's anything for people to take away from this is to take action.

To not be complicit anymore.

It's time to take action so that all of our great, great grandchildren into the future collectively as one humankind can enjoy the beauty of this Earth and life on Earth/ Thank you so very much.

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