Holiday musings from Brazil: Is it time for missionaries to leave indigenous tribes alone?

It’s that time of year again.

We’re talking about The Holidays, the season when Thanksgiving and Christmas bookend America’s annual celebration of its history of Christian influences, even if today’s mass-media crush obscures that. It’s a season of family gatherings, annual notes to far-flung friends and acquaintances, garish holiday-themed sweaters designed to provoke smiles, and, for some, even a few religious services.

It’s a big deal journalistically, too, of course. Editors/producers and reporters/content providers seek out warm-and-fuzzy, feel-good features meant to remind media consumers of the genuine goodness individual humans are capable of showing others, including strangers.

We call it the holiday spirit and, except for the rampant consumerism, I appreciate the seasonal goodwill. And why not? Upbeat news is a welcome change from the disconcerting stories we’re usually fed. It’s good for the soul, and I need not subscribe to the traditional beliefs for it to warm my heart.

It’s also a time when journalists seek to probe the theological aspects of our holiday narratives, often to the distaste of those news consumers who prefer the comforting familiarity of traditional tellings or even the more sobering messages of traditional Christian faith in Advent and Christmas.

Such stories — here’s one example from a few years back that ran in the Guardian — are tricky, requiring solid sourcing and clear, even-handed and respectful explanations.

Another category of holiday stories addresses the consequences of past Christian actions that a reporter can link to the season, even if the link is indirect at best. Take this recent Washington Post story — “This tribe helped the Pilgrims survive for their first Thanksgiving. They still regret it 400 years later” — on how the indigenous tribe, the Wampanoag, that first encountered the Pilgrims in what is now Massachusetts were decimated by the encounter. Here’s a large bite of it:

Just as Native American activists have demanded the removal of Christopher Columbus statues and pushed to transform the Columbus holiday into an acknowledgment of his brutality toward indigenous people, they have long objected to the popular portrayal of Thanksgiving.
For the Wampanoags and many other American Indians, the fourth Thursday in November is considered a day of mourning, not a day of celebration.

Doctrine of Discovery: Still relevant when covering Pope Francis' outreach to indigenous tribes

In both Chile and Peru last week, Pope Francis addressed the plight of those two nations’ indigenous tribes that have been on the losing end of interactions with European colonizers since the dawn of the Age of Discovery.

In Chile, he spoke about the Mapuche tribe’s struggle, which has turned violent at times, to gain back some of its ancestral land in that nation’s south. This Associated Press piece (published here as it appeared in the Seattle Times) provides the background necessary to understand the issue.

It was in Peru, however, where the pontiff’s words about the worsening plight of the Amazonian tribes, received greater media attention.

That’s due in part to his equal emphasis on the ever-increasing intrusion by miners, ranchers and others intent, often with government complicity, on exploiting the Amazon basin, the world’s largest tropical rain forest.

Given the Amazon’s critical role in the debate over climate change, any mention of it by Pope Francis is sure to draw headlines.

But I wonder: Why did I find no mention in the mainstream news reports I read about the papal trip of Rome's huge role in the early colonization of the tribes and their land? Why no mention of the, to me, confused status of the Doctrine of Discovery, the papal documents by which the Vatican first officially blessed the ruthless takeover of newly “discovered,” non-Christian lands and any of their inhabitants in the New World?

Because just as the church's sex abuse scandal won't disappear, Vatican relations with indigenous peoples can't fully heal until Pope Francis -- or some future pope -- confronts the lingering anger over the doctrine’s unilateral claim to lands inhabited by non-Christian tribes.

The doctrine, you may argue, has a confusing history dating from a premodern mindset. Nor can it's damage simply be reversed -- so why dwell on it?

Such an argument may be made. But so can an argument be made for its further debate. After all, other Christian churches and even bodies within the Catholic church have repudiated the doctrine or asked that Rome officially take that step.