The Land Is Not Empty

Auteur

Sarah Augustine, who is a Pueblo (Tewa) descendant, is cofounder and executive director of the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Coalition. She is also the cofounder of Suriname Indigenous Health Fund (SIHF), where she has worked in relationship with vulnerable Indigenous Peoples since 2005. She has represented the interests of Indigenous community partners to their own governments, the Inter-American development bank, the United Nations, the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the World Health Organization, among others. She cohosts the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery podcast with Sheri Hostetler and is the author of The Land Is Not Empty. She serves in a leadership role on multiple boards and commissions to enable vulnerable peoples in Washington State to speak for themselves in advocating for structural change. She and her husband Dan Peplow and their son live in the Yakima Valley of Washington.

Texte du rabat

White settlers saw land for the taking. They failed to consider the perspective of the people already here. In The Land Is Not Empty, author Sarah Augustine unpacks the harm of the Doctrine of Discovery--a set of laws rooted in the fifteenth century that gave Christian governments the moral and legal right to seize lands they "discovered" despite those lands already being populated by indigenous peoples. Legitimized by the church and justified by a misreading of Scripture, the Doctrine of Discovery says a land can be considered "empty" and therefore free for the taking if inhabited by "heathens, pagans, and infidels." In this prophetic book, Augustine, a Pueblo woman, reframes the colonization of North America as she investigates ways that the Doctrine of Discovery continues to devastate indigenous cultures, and even the planet itself, as it justifies exploitation of both natural resources and people. This is a powerful call to reckon with the root causes of a legacy that continues to have devastating effects on indigenous peoples around the globe and a call to recognize how all of our lives and our choices are interwoven.
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What was done in the name of Christ must be undone in the name of Christ, the author claims. The good news of Jesus means there is still hope for the righting of wrongs. Right relationship with God, others, and the earth requires no less.