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president william mckinley

Facing our investment in domination

The first time I heard Shawnee-Lenape author and Indigenous-rights activist Steven T. Newcomb discuss “The Doctrine of Domination,” something clicked. I was familiar with the papal bull Dum Diversas, which facilitated the Portuguese slave trade from West Africa, but what struck me was his use of the word domination to describe the series of papal bulletins used to justify conquest, genocide, slavery, occupation and war. His articulation reveals the church as an architect, legitimator and apologist for domination.