Western Christianity's Original Sin Against Creation
The Doctrine of Discovery
The Theological Root of Ecological Destruction
When Pope Alexander VI signed the papal bull Inter Caetera on May 4, 1493, he sanctified the transformation of living creation into a dead commodity. This 15th-century document, along with its predecessors like Romanus Pontifex (1455), established what became known as the Doctrine of Discovery: the theological framework that justified not only Indigenous genocide but the fundamental reimagining of Earth as property rather than relative.
The doctrine's power lies not merely in its historical impact but in how it continues to drive today's climate crisis, corporate extraction, and environmental racism. Every pipeline through sacred lands, every mountain blown apart for coal, every river poisoned by industrial waste traces its legal and moral justification back to these papal decrees that declared any land "not inhabited by Christians was available to be 'discovered,' claimed, and exploited."
The Theological Architecture of Ecocide
The Doctrine of Discovery accomplished something unprecedented in human history: it transformed a theological relationship into legal ownership. As author and activist Sarah Augustine notes, the doctrine "legalized the theft of land, labor, and resources from Indigenous peoples across the world and systematically denied their human rights" for over five centuries.
But the doctrine's devastation runs deeper than land theft. It fundamentally reordered the Christian understanding of creation itself. Where Indigenous peoples understood land as mother, ancestor, and sacred relative, the papal bulls redefined it as terra nullius—empty land waiting for Christian dominion. This wasn't just colonization, but it was also the start of a cosmological revolution.
The roots of this theological violence reach back even further than the 15th-century papal bulls. The Greek philosopher Plato separated the idea of a thing from the thing itself, creating a duality between a thing's ethereal essence and its material existence. Platonic dualism places more importance on the ethereal than the material. This philosophical foundation made possible the doctrine's later theological innovations by establishing a hierarchy that devalued the material world, including Earth itself and the Indigenous peoples who understood themselves as part of it.
The 1455 bull Romanus Pontifex explicitly granted Portugal the right to "invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue all Saracens and pagans" while claiming their lands. By defining non-Christians as less than fully human, the doctrine simultaneously defined their relationship to land as less than valid. Indigenous peoples' sacred kinship with creation was rendered legally and theologically void.
From Papal Bulls to Pipeline Wars
The doctrine evolved with colonialism. In 1823, the U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. McIntosh made the Doctrine of Discovery the foundation of American property law, holding that Indigenous peoples retained only "a right of occupancy, which could be abolished." Today, when energy companies invoke "eminent domain" to bulldoze through sacred sites, when mining corporations claim legal right to blow apart mountains, when governments approve pipelines through treaty territories—they're wielding the same theological weapon forged in those 15th-century papal bulls.
The American dream is an Indigenous nightmare. What settler society celebrates as progress and prosperity, Indigenous communities experience as ongoing violation and loss. The values within a harmony way framework have sustained many of the Indigenous people in the world over millennia. The values of the harmony way are the values that will sustain us well into the future, not the extractive values encoded in the Doctrine of Discovery.
The Dakota Access Pipeline controversy exemplifies this continuity. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and members of other tribes faced "a project that prioritizes the extraction of oil over the people inhabiting these territories and the health of our planet"—a perfect illustration of how the doctrine's logic continues to prioritize corporate profit over Indigenous sovereignty and ecological integrity. Meanwhile our elders had their sacred eagle feather headdresses torn from their heads and thrown on the ground; they put them in cages, with numbers on their wrists akin to Nazi concentration camp numbering.
Environmental Racism as Theological Legacy
The doctrine's impact on the climate crisis extends beyond land disputes to the very structure of environmental racism. Communities of color—especially Indigenous communities—disproportionately bear the burden of toxic waste, industrial pollution, and climate change impacts by design rooted in the doctrine's dehumanizing logic.
When corporations site hazardous facilities in Indigenous communities, when governments approve uranium mining on Native lands, when climate change most severely impacts those who contributed least to the problem, we're witnessing the contemporary application of 15th-century papal theology that deemed non-Christian lands and Indigenous people expendable for Christian economic advancement.
The uranium mining legacy in Diné (Navajo) territory exemplifies this violence. Certain areas were a center of uranium mining, and today are hot spots for oil and gas production. The uranium mines in the area have now closed, but Indigenous communities still battle the impact on their health decades later as cancer has become their family legacy. The radioactive contamination poisoning Diné families today flows directly from the doctrine's authorization to treat Indigenous lands as sacrifice zones for settler benefit.
Creation as Commodity: The Spiritual Violence of Market Logic
The doctrine's most insidious legacy lies in how it normalized treating creation as a commodity rather than a relative. Where Indigenous cultures understand we belong in the great circle of nature with the whole community of creation, the Doctrine of Discovery introduced the concept of "discovery"—the idea that land could be "found" and owned by those who had no relationship to it.
A whole host of other problems—such as hierarchy, overcategorizing, individualism, patriarchy, racism, religious intolerance, greed, and thinking that says humanity is over nature—flow from the dualism Discovery is based. The influence of Platonic dualism empowers all these other concerns. The Doctrine of Discovery didn't create these problems from nothing; it institutionalized and sanctified the dualistic worldview that makes such violations seem not only acceptable but even divinely ordained.
Healing Earth Requires Dismantling the Doctrine
The same theological framework that justified Indigenous genocide continues to authorize ecological destruction. Both flow from the doctrine's core premise: that creation exists for the benefit of those with the power to claim it. Dismantling this requires:
Legal Reform: Overturning property laws based on the doctrine and recognizing Indigenous sovereignty over traditional territories. Indigenous Peoples "safeguard key ecosystems that act as carbon sinks and protect biodiversity" far more effectively than any government or corporation.
Rights of Nature: Granting legal personhood and constitutional rights to Earth itself represents a fundamental shift from viewing nature as property to recognizing it as a living entity with inherent rights. This Indigenous-informed legal framework has been adopted by:
· Countries: Ecuador (2008 constitution), Bolivia (2012 Framework Law of Mother Earth), New Zealand (Whanganui River, 2017), Colombia (Amazon rainforest, 2018)
· US Cities: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2010, banning fracking); Santa Monica, California (2013, sustainability rights); Lake Erie (2019, though later overturned)
· Indigenous Nations: White Earth Band of Ojibwe (2018, recognizing rights of wild rice)
This legal revolution challenges the doctrine's foundational assumption that Earth exists solely for human exploitation, instead establishing reciprocal legal obligations between humans and the natural world.
Economic Transformation: Moving from extractive capitalism to regenerative economics based on reciprocity rather than extraction. Indigenous communities demonstrate that "despite making up just 3% of the global population, Indigenous people look after 80% of the world's biodiversity".
Theological Decolonization: Christian churches must actively work to uproot the doctrine's influence from their teachings and practices. This means rejecting dominion theology in favor of kinship with creation. (Contact me, I'll be glad to make a presentation)
Political Resistance: Supporting Indigenous-led movements defending their territories from extraction industries. Every successful defense of Indigenous land is a victory for climate stability.
Conclusion: From Dominion to Kinship
Taking a cue from Platonic dualism and Aristotelian hierarchy (a story I'll deal with more fully in another article), the Doctrine of Discovery enabled genocide and underwrote a theological revolution that separated humanity from nature and made possible the commodification of creation. Today's climate crisis is its logical culmination: a world where Earth's life-support systems are sacrificed for short-term profit by those who see creation as a commodity rather than kin.
Healing our relationship with Earth requires more than political or technological solutions—it demands spiritual decolonization, and science has no spiritual solutions. We must choose between the doctrine's legacy of dominion and destruction, or Indigenous wisdom that understands humans as part of creation's sacred web of relationships.
We are all Indigenous to some place. We are all from somewhere. Allow that thought to sink deep into your being. This recognition doesn't erase the specific histories of colonization and genocide that Indigenous peoples have endured, but it does call every person to remember their own rootedness in sacred place and their own responsibility to the land that now sustains them.
The choice could not be clearer or more urgent. As Indigenous climate leaders remind us, we don't have time to incrementally reform systems built on the doctrine's foundation. We need the courage to dismantle them entirely and rebuild on principles of kinship, reciprocity, and reverence for the Sacred Earth that sustains us all.
Each of us must become protectors of Mother Earth. That transformation begins with recognizing Western Christianity's original sin against creation and committing to the hard work of restoration.