Subscribe:
RSS feed
Browsing All posts tagged under »First Nations History«
Aztecs at the Court of Charles V
Aboriginal people had been depicted many times by Europeans prior to 1529, of course. But curiously enough, up to that date, all surviving depictions of Aboriginal people by Europeans were speculative, purely products of the imagination. In 1529, Christoph Weiditz, a German artist traveling with the court of Spanish Emperor Charles V, did what no one […]
The Innu & the Drummer Boy, 1633
June 14, 2011
An incident that occurred in 1633 showed that the cherishing attitude of the Montagnais-Naskapi toward all their children extended even to the French. A Montagnais man was looking closely at a drummer boy and his drum and was hit in the head with a drumstick, drawing blood. In Montagnais style, the onlookers asked for presents in […]
Father Theo’s Bookshelf: Three Books About History
February 16, 2011
There are other books, of course. These three I offer because they were useful to me. I expect to make other recommendations in the future. (That’s fair warning.) Sven Lindqvist, “Exterminate All the Brutes”, The New Press, New York, 1996. A travel book. A meditation on colonialism. An examination of the same colonial Africa which […]
History of Aboriginal America 8 – Taking Aboriginal Lands
February 5, 2011
11. Were the Spanish Entitled to Take Aboriginal Lands? Why, as described in the previous unit, did Francisco de Vitoria feel compelled to uphold the indigenous people of the Americas as property owners? Because if they could not own property, then the Spanish could simply help themselves to what they wanted without resort to conscience, […]
It is a strict law that bids us dance
February 1, 2011
We want to know whether you have come to stop our dances and feasts, as the missionaries and agents who live among our neighbours try to do. We do not want anybody here who will interfere with our customs. We were told that a man-of-war would come if we should continue to as our grandfathers […]
History of Aboriginal America 7: The Birth of Aboriginal Rights
January 20, 2011
Plato, Aristotle & the School of Athens 10. The Father of International Law & the Rights of Indigenous Americans In 1532, forty years after Columbus first voyage, we hear for the first time some philosophic and legal objection to what had being occurring in the Americas. A cleric and academic by the name of Francisco […]
History of Aboriginal America 6: Papal Generosity, the Laws of Burgos & more
January 14, 2011
9. The Requirement, the Laws of Burgos and the Papal Donation of 1493 In 1513, Spain issued the Laws of Burgos which are notable for two things: they officially incorporated and made part of Spanish law the institution created by Columbus, the incomienda, whereby land grants to settlers included, as an extra added benefit, the right to […]
Requerimiento (1513)
January 7, 2011
The following document was written by Palacios Rubios in 1513. The Requirement or the requerimiento required Aboriginal people who heard it to surrender their lands and freedom to Spain, or face war and slavery. As it came to be used, the mere reading of the document — in what would have been incomprehensible Spanish, sometimes […]
The Pope Grants the Americas to Spain: Inter Caetera, May 4, 1493
January 6, 2011
Pope Alexander VI was born in Spain. His original name was Rodrigo Borgia. He was the father of Lucrezia Borgia and Cesare Borgia. The papal bull Inter Caetera, issued by Pope Alexander VI on May 4, 1493, granted the Americas to Spain. A papal bull was a papal decree, intended to be taken as the […]
Archaeological Sites in British Columbia & Other Dates
October 8, 2010
(Note: BP means before the present, with the present being standardized at 1950. These dates, when not taken from historical data*, are the result by and large of radiocarbon dating and are approximations only.) 30,000 BP – Beringia settled Beringia is a territory comprising parts of Siberia, Alaska, the Yukon and a now-lost area beneath […]
Grandpa Theo
With Malaika
Klick This Pic
An Informal Chronology of the Aboriginal Land Question in BC
Father Theo's Blog 
August 19, 2011
0