Onondaga Chief Calls on Pope to Renounce Doctrine of Discovery

Onondaga Nation Chief Oren Lyons is calling on Pope Benedict XVI to renounce the Doctrine of Discovery "as a critical step on the road to right historic wrongs visited upon indigenous peoples here and elsewhere around the world where it was similarly applied."

In an article in Sunday's Albany Times-Union, Lyons argues that the doctrine, known as Inter Cetera, forms the basis of Indian law in United States and has been cited as recently as 2005 by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a case denying sovereign status to land purchased by the Oneida Nation.

Lyons is a traditional Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, and a Member of the Onondaga Nation Council of Chiefs of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, or the Haudenosaunee ("People of the Long House").