PMC had the privilege of having Sarah Augustine speak with us on February 17. You’ll first hear Kate Wentland, Coordinator of Full Circle Project, introduce Sarah. Sarah chairs the Structures Committee of the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Coalition, an Anabaptist movement.

Sarah shared about her identity as both an indigenous woman and a Mennonite woman. She shares the story of “The Laughing Warrior Girl” — a story shared in Sarah’s community through oral tradition.

The story demonstrates that indigenous people live collectively and discern what should be done best within the group — as do Anabaptists. There can be tension when one wants engage in yieldedness, the humility of acknowledging you don’t know everything — and yet sense the Spirit calling you to justice. Sarah knows this tension. Discipleship is discernment expressed in action. Yet sometimes it can be difficult for groups to move from discernment to action. In indigenous community, the value of community includes connection to all living things, all life, the earth.

Sarah went on to share about how she began working in Suriname, South America. In 2004, she was on a research team evaluating the impact of mercury in the environment due to mining. Sarah’s role as a sociologist was to help the translators and the scientific team to engage in appropriate ways with the local community. Sarah was challenged by a community member, an elder, to fight with the local community, whose property had been taken, fenced off, and concessed to a corporation. Sarah accepted the challenge, and has been working with the community there for the past 15 years.

Sarah shares that at first she thought that as she shared with people in authority the facts of the land grabbing happening in the communities for mining and logging — that the right people would come in and reverse the process. What she learned was that it was legal — and happens within a legal structure created to further this process. This is the Doctrine of Discovery.

The Doctrine of Discovery was created by the church in the first international policy of laws and agreements so that European powers with the technology to explore the globe would not go to war with each other over territory. They set up a system determining who would be allowed to have land — and this formed the basis of the international law that we have today.

The people that inhabited land, if they were not Christian, or ruled by a Christian prince, were not considered to be human. This was a legal standard called terra nullius — meaning the land is unoccupied or uninhabited, or available for discovery. Those land claims made in the 15th and 16th century are the basis for how land is owned today. And this is the context the people of Suriname, in the rain forest, are living today. Sarah goes on to tell more about the situation of the people there. Essentially, missionaries in the 1970’s supposedly consolidated the people into groups, and declared to the state that the interior was empty — and could be opened for exploration, extraction of oil, minerals, timber, etc.

This is the logic created by the church in the Doctrine of Discovery and rooted in Christian doctrine. And church and environmental agencies were aware of the situation today. It is embedded in the idea of divine mandate, and the idea of covenant in the promised land transferred to the Christian Church with the coming of Christ. The idea of the Great Commission can also be seen as a part of this process.

Sarah works within the Mennonite church in the U.S. and globally to discuss this situation, and also to mobilize her people to come to the aid of people in need. She asks people of faith to actively call on extractive industries to dialogue with indigenous peoples. As disciples of Jesus, people of faith represent the alternative to seeking profit at all cost. As a people of peace, Anabaptists have a special role in calling financial interests and political leaders into relationship with the oppressed.

Please forgive a break in the recording 5 minutes from the end. After approximately two minutes of silence (3 minutes from the end) are comments related to slides of Suriname, and a closing of Sarah’s comments.

Hear more of Sarah’s story here, along with more information on the Doctrine of Discovery, still active today, and the need for people of faith to work toward dismantling:

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