land had appeared out of nowhere: it wasn’t home to anyone or anything, it was void of all life until verse 11 when God created vegetation. This new land was also still in complete darkness because the creation of light doesn’t happen until verse 14. As stated previously, it is widely believed that the author’s purpose in writing the Genesis creation narrative was to prove how powerful the God of the Israelites was. There is no perceived relationship between God and the land or seas, they are elements to be controlled, to be dominated in order to show the power of God. Unfortunately, it was this historically-held theological belief, especially among white, non-Indigenous Christians, that lead to the widely-held belief that colonization and the conquering of foreign lands was not only Godly behaviour but, by extension, ordained behaviour for followers of the Christian God. For this reason, the ambition of every great civilization has been to create the largest and strongest boats that could sail further and further. The further a ship could sail the more lands a civilization or empire could ‘discover’ for the first time and claim as their own. It didn’t matter if there were native peoples already living on said land. If the dominant civilization believed that they were the first people to find it then they believed it was “new land”, not belonging to anyone, not home to anything and in complete darkness. If necessary, we First Nations were simply categorised as the flora and fauna that starts to appear to verse 11. Those with the biggest ships and the strongest armies control the land and seas and whoever controls the land and seas has power and dominion over the earth, the known lands. Still to this day we can see this with the ever expanding and changing military powers around 33
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