Letters to the Editor: U.S.' history of injustice against Indigenous people has lasting consequences

Los Angeles Times

02-07-2025

To the editor: As an Indigenous citizen, I commend guest contributor Tony Platt's excellent article about UC's role in shaping a distorted and incomplete history of the Indigenous inhabitants in and around its Berkeley campus ('The California story we keep erasing,' June 29). Sadly, UC's history is a microcosm of the national history of untold native tribal injustices inflicted by the U.S. government.
I was roused by Yurok Tribal Court Chief Judge Abby Abinanti's admonition: 'The hardest mistakes to correct are those that are ingrained.'
What mistakes are ingrained and how did it occur? In the 15th century, Pope Nicholas V gave European explorers the legal and moral right to possess Indigenous lands, to 'invade, search out, capture and subdue all … pagans' in the name of religion. That dubious right became known as the Doctrine of Discovery. It was based on the principle that presumed the superiority of European Christians. This doctrine empowered the settling and colonizing of this continent. The Doctrine of Discovery's dehumanizing principles were ingrained in our foundational documents. The language of the Declaration of Independence excludes Indigenous people ('merciless Indian savages'), and African Americans were deemed three-fifths of a person in the electoral college.
The Doctrine of Discovery was referenced as legal precedent by the Supreme Court as recently as 2005 in the City of Sherrill vs. Oneida Indian Nation case. This ingrained supremacy principle is all too evident in the appalling events happening now. Woefully, the Yurok Tribal Court judge was spot-on.
Harold Printup, Mar Vista