The following letter was published in Indian Country Today Media Network, the world's largest Indian news source.

A new paradigm?

by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer

The national Episcopal Church recently repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery. A series of 15th century papal bulls which were the basis for the formulation of an international legal construct (the Doctrine) gave Christian monarchs who "discovered" non-Christian lands and territories the "right" to claim a superior and paramount title to those lands and territories.

The Episcopal Church's 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."

The inherent rights that peoples have received from God were not based on race, creed, color, nor civilized or un-civilized status, but by reason of their humanity. Therefore, indigenous peoples' homelands fully belonged to them when Europeans "discovered" them and the European colonists and later European Americans had no right to claim them and subjugate their indigenous habitants. Therefore, the indigenous peoples' homelands in the New World belonged, and still fully belong to them. A new paradigm is beginning to be established, in part, on this reasoning and conclusion.

Appropriate respect for indigenous people would open up the process for bringing radical transformation to this nation's dominant culture, a transformation that would cause the people of the dominant culture to become tribal people who would be dominated (ruled over) by this land's indigenous peoples. However, this will not occur until after the extreme arrogance of the people of the dominant culture has been eliminated. It's a type of arrogance that has kept them from seeing the truth about themselves, their history, culture and religion. It will be newly revealed evidence of the radical abuse of this land's indigenous peoples that will cause cultural mainstream Americans to recognize their extreme arrogance and repent.

This process of becoming aware of their arrogance associated with the abuse of indigenous peoples will subsequently influence them to want to give appropriate respect for other peoples' cultures and religions which they have not done because of their deluded self-righteous arrogance.

Giving all peoples appropriate respect will consequently create a new paradigm that will inspire the creation and establishment of a new universal religion that will serve as the basis and principle of unity for a single united global culture wherein humanity will become united and liberated.