The celebration of Columbus Day reproduces the Doctrine of Discovery. The Doctrine of Discovery involves the idea that someone can “discover” a place where millions of people already live. Columbus day is presented as the celebration of a man who started the exchange of cultures between hemispheres, even though cultural exchange was clearly never an objective of any of Columbus’s expeditions. Its existence as a holiday sends the message that the violent transfer of land rights from Indigenous people to Europeans once they arrived and claimed it was a natural, or at least inevitable, process of history. This doctrine still forms the foundation for federal laws that control the lives of Indigenous people today. Not only that, but it warps the histories of Indigenous People in the United States and elsewhere, further disrespecting their legacy as people who logically should not still exist--that is, they are alive today, maintaining their Native identities, against all odds. The Doctrine of Discovery was sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church during the so-called "Age of Exploration", with papal bulls Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex of 1454, and Inter Caetera, theologically solidifying European dominance over non-Christian peoples (all other humans on planet Earth). Dum Diversas granted Portugal the authority to enslave “Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and any other unbelievers,” facilitating the Portuguese slave trade from West Africa. As a follow up to Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex confirmed to the Crown of Portugal dominion over all lands south of Cape Bojador in Africa, and reaffirmed Portugal's right to enslave the people of these lands. The primary purpose of Romanus Pontifex was to protect Portugal's dominant position of trade and colonization in these regions from other up and coming colonial powers. In 1493, after Columbus landed in the Caribbean, Inter Caetera granted Spain claims to empire independent of Portugal, and preceded the Treaty of Tordesillas in divvying up the "New World" between the two colonial powers. The church declared war on “the heathen,” a classification that could be applied to all non-Europeans and non-Christians, making it easy for economically motivated soldier-merchants to practice a policy of annihilation upon arrival at foreign shores. In 1494, The Treaty of Tordesillas divided the “New World” between Spain and Portugal, and clarified that the Doctrine of Discovery applied only to Non-Christian lands. Basically, planting a flag was the equivalent of obtaining land rights. When Puritan separatists arrived on the shores of the North American continent in 1620, they did so already believing any people that met them there were “of Satan,” and that they were “winning” the New World for God in eliminating the heathen through either conversion or slaughter. This winning is part of a covenant ideology that persists to the present day, in that the Anglo settler has a sacred covenant with God to battle pagans and heathens in the ultimate battle for souls. This covenant has been transformed into a more secular ideology: American exceptionalism. The exceptionalist ideology of the United States functions to make people believe that America’s activities, foreign and domestic, are done “with God on our side.” Patriotism is a sacred and Godly virtue, and criticism of the US military is unpatriotic. After the establishment of the United States upon the surrender of England to the colonial army, Thomas Jefferson cited the Doctrine of Discovery developed by the European states was international law applicable to the US government. The 1823, U.S. Supreme Court Ruling Johnson v. McIntosh held that, “Discovery gave title to the government, by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.” The ruling set a legal precedent that still exercises power over Native Americans today, despite all of the Indigenous struggle to have major institutions and governmental bodies reject the Doctrine of Discovery.