On May 8th, 2025, at the Vatican, the Conclave elected Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost as the 267th Bishop of Rome. Known as Pope Leo XIV, he succeeds Pope Francis, and inherits a long, violent and unresolved legacy of the Vatican’s role in committing intergenerational settler colonial violence and genocides against Indigenous peoples, clans, communities, and nations throughout the world. The Vatican’s complicity can be traced back to the 15th century issuance of three papal bulls, the first two decreed by Pope Nicholas V in 1452 and Romanus Pontifex (1455); and third by Pope Alexander VI's Inter caetera in 1493.

Known as the Doctrine of Dominion or Discovery, the Papal bulls authorized colonial powers such as Spain, Portugal, and other European monarchies and countries to seize lands and subjugate people in Africa and the western hemisphere so long as Indigenous peoples were not Christians. In the United States, the Doctrine of Dominion/discovery, indeed, is the foundation of America’s property law and federal Indian law that violently ensures Native Americans dispossession of their traditional and treaty homelands – a situation established by the Vatican in the 15th century. 

Over the centuries, the Vatican and its missionaries have been responsible for the theft of thousands and thousands of Indigenous peoples sacred or ceremonial items and other forms of cultural patrimony, which have either been on display at the Vatican Museum, or remain hostage at the Vatican and possibly other religious institutions. To date, the Vatican has not repatriated Indigenous ceremonial items back to Indigenous peoples and nations in violating the UNDRIP and denying Indigenous peoples fundamental rights. 

So, what does Pope Leo XIV mean for Indigenous peoples throughout the world? Pope Leo inherits Pope Francis’s legacy which includes: in 2022, the Vatican issuing an apology for the “catastrophic” legacy of residential schools in Canada; in 2023, the Vatican repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery” without calling for settler colonial countries to do the same, and in 2023, Pope Francis, despite the formal protest of 50 California Indian nations, was responsible for the canonization of the Spanish missionary Junipero Serra who masterminded the 18th-century Alta Spanish mission system that functioned as violent theological network attempting to vanquish Indigenous peoples along the coast of California and parts of the western hemisphere. 

Guest:
Valentin Lopez, Amah Mutsun Nation, is Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Nation, one of three historic California Indigenous Nations that are recognized as Ohlone. Valentin is Mutsun, Awaswas, Chumash and Yokuts (http://amahmutsun.org/governance/tribal-council).  

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The Vatican’s Transition, the Doctrine of Domination, & Possession of Indigenous Sacred Items/Cultural Patrimony

American Indian Airwaves (AIA), an Indigenous public affairs radio porgram and, perhaps, the longest running Native American radio program within both Indigenous and the United States broadcast communication histories. Also, AIA broadcast weekly every Thursday from 7pm to 8pm (PCT) on KPFK FM 90.7 Los Angeles (http://www.kpfk.org).  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aiacr


American Indian Airwaves is produced in Burntswamp Studios and started broadcasting on March 1st, 1973 on KPFK in order to give Indigenous peoples and their respective First Nations a voice about the continuous struggles against Settler Colonialism and imperialism by the occupying and settler societies often referred to as the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Latin and South America countries located therein.

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