episode 83: Sarah Agustine and the Land is Not Empty

Sarah Augustine Episode 83

Cody and I have been on break for a while. Summer means a different pace of work, family time, and travel. We both had church conferences, and other work-related activities. And there were delays because of health issues as well.

We spoke with Sarah Augustine earlier this Spring about her work as an advocate for indigenous people’s justice in the USA and in Suriname. Sarah is a descendant of the Tewa people, also known as the Pueblo, and lives among the Yakima nation in central Washington.

One of the major themes the indigenous people have had to resist is the Christian Nationalist policies emerging from terra nulius. In it various expressions, it has treated indigenous people as mere raw materials on the land; as a part of the land to be exploited (Bureau of Indian Affairs is a subsection of the Department of the Interior, for instance). Terra nulius has justified land theft, kidnapping, killing and domination, and the removal of children from the homes of the birth to be educated in church-based boarding schools. These experiences, established in the age of discovery, instituted, and maintained by the church, demonstrate what Christian Nationalism looks like, and that it is not hypothetical. We’ve been here before.

Sarah Augustine’s author page at Anabaptist World : https://anabaptistworld.org/author/sarah-augustine/ and at  MennoMedia https://www.mennomedia.org/author/sarah-augustine/

The Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery, by Sarah Augustine at Herald Press https://heraldpress.com/9781513808291/the-land-is-not-empty/

https://dofdmenno.org/

https://www.facebook.com/dismantlediscovery/