S6E02: A Theologian Confronts the Doctrine of Discovery and Calls for Institutional Repair

Jeannine Hill Fletcher, a theologian trained to interpret religious diversity, arrives at a white, Jesuit university and realizes something unsettling: you can’t do justice work without confronting the white supremacy woven through Christian history, law, and institutional life. That realization sends us down a path that threads together the Doctrine of Discovery, Johnson v. M’Intosh, and the everyday ways theology became policy—on campus, in courts, and across stolen land.We talk with Jeannine Hill Fletcher about naming “the sin of white supremacy” before and after Charlottesville, and how her new work shifts from national narrative to institutional repair. The conversation moves from Maryland’s Jesuit land grants and enslaved labor to 1656 Onondaga—where French Jesuits arrived with a deed—showing how papal bulls morphed into U.S. property law and public memory. Along the way, we lift up Haudenosaunee matrilineal governance as a living counter-order, and trace how patriarchy and boarding schools targeted grandmothers, kinship, language, and law. Wampum belts, not just Jesuit Relations, anchor an archive of sovereignty that refuses erasure.If repair is more than a press release, what does it actually ask of institutions? We get into rematriation initiatives, land transfers from Catholic women religious, revenue redirection, and curricula that center Indigenous sources. We press on the hard question of Christian supremacy’s long arc—how a Christendom mindset powered both Catholic mission and Protestant nation-building—while looking for “otherwise” possibilities that history still holds: treaties imagining representation, Indigenous democracies shaping governance, and communities that never ceded who they are. Together, we consider what it would mean for institutions to confess, return, and relearn right relationship—with people, and with land, water, and air.Listen in and tell us what you think: What’s one concrete step your institution should take toward real repair? If the conversation moves you, subscribe, leave a review, and invite someone into this work with you.Support the showView the transcript and show notes at podcast.doctrineofdiscovery.org.  Learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery on our site DoctrineofDiscovery.org.