Aanii (Hello) to my fellow clergy. I have a unique situation that is coming up more and more and I would love some input please.
*Before I start let me state here that this is not an attack on or bashing of any religion.
Native American Christian. I can find no bigger oxymoron no matter how hard I search for one. There is a great divide among our Native American peoples. There are those of us who are "traditionalists" and practice the traditional culture of our ancient ancestors, and then there are the "Christian Indians" as they are often referenced among tribal peoples.
If you're wondering why this is so unsettling or a question at all, the history of our Native American peoples says it all. Our spiritual beliefs are the very foundation of our cultures, lifestyles, and everything we do, how we think, feel, react, exist. Then in 1492 it all went to hell when the first colonists showed up and decided our peoples were all "heathens" and needed to be given the choice between "being civilized" or "death". In the 1700's the residential boarding schools began, with the intent to "kill the indian, save the man". (Yes, that's a real quote from one of the directors of the residential schools) Basically the residential schools were designed and put into place to abuse the indigenous out of our peoples. Along with it came laws that made our cultures, languages, clothing, spiritual beliefs, ceremonies, etc. illegal until 1978, when I was an 8 yr old child.
Those who survived the boarding schools were then sent out into the world with no connection left to their original cultures, beliefs, traditions, ceremonies, or even their families and tribes/nations of people. They couldn't even speak their native languages enough to communicate with their own immediate family members. They were released from the schools "saved", after yrs of extreme abuse, traumatized, alone, and having been completely converted to Christianity by force, without choice.
Now we are in 2022 and there is a clash among the traditional peoples who are working hard to reestablish our ancient cultures and languages, etc. and then there are today's older generations who were those boarding school kids in many cases, and the spiritual vs religious beliefs are being challenged back and forth.
I will admit, while I was raised a strict Lutheran, I am no longer Christian, but rather a traditionalist in my Native culture. It was a decade long process and it was a complicated and difficult transition, especially considering my husband is Mormon. But, at the same time I see both sides of this situation and how it came to be.
How to help facilitate peace between the 2 sides of this coin? Is there a way? I see this as a situation of Stockholm's Syndrome, and there are many traditionalists who agree with that assessment.
What really brings the conflict is when the Christian Natives are participating (or attempting to) in our traditional practices, traditions, and ceremonies, declaring they are "living our culture", yet seem to not understand that Christianity and most of our indigenous cultures are in direct conflict with each other outside of the shared belief of 1 supreme Creator of all things. (Not all indigenous cultures believe in 1 supreme Creator)
My conflict, off the top, is about the indoctrination that was forced on my ancestors and thus handed down by birthright to each generation since the boarding schools, in place of our ancestral cultures and beliefs.
I did ask 2 elders not long ago about this conflict. Both claim to live our indigenous cultures and share our indigenous beliefs, yet are Christian at the same time. When asked for a simplified explanation of how that works, one of them told me about "the white bird that came down and touched Jesus, turned into an eagle, and flew up to Heaven..." and the other got quite upset and distressed as he explained, "our ancestors learned about Christianity when the colonists arrived, realized they believed the same things, so blended the 2 belief systems..." (which couldn't be further from the truth)
My church, The KICC, teaches traditional Anishinaabe culture, traditions, life skills, and spiritual beliefs, etc. As chief clergy it is up to me to guide us all through these difficulties and conflicts, or is it just confusion about what our culture actually IS? I am not sure how to approach this without offending people and chasing them away. I don't wish to convert anyone, but I must stand on our traditional culture for our teachings, and it is offered by example as it is my lifestyle and personal belief system. I simply wish to make sure our indigenous peoples are informed/educated that the differences between our cultures and Christianity are extreme and vast. One cannot pledge themselves to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as "the one and only" and then go out back after dark and pray and lay offerings to Grandmother Moon. Yet that is what these people are doing. That is neither Christian or indigenous culture... it is boarding school trauma, generational trauma, handed down to us over the past 500 years.
I find this to be a lack of understanding for both things they claim... our culture and Christianity.
Let me offer some examples of the stark contrasts/conflicts between the 2, for those who don't know our indigenous history.
Christianity designates "man" as keeper/caretaker of all of creation, dominant over all others.
The Anishinaabe culture teaches us that we are equals to all other beings on earth, we are all related. No species is above or below another, and we are all necessary for the world to function with balance, in harmony.
Our creation story is focused around the animals, who could once speak, and it was the animals who put land on turtle's back to create Turtle Island, not God who created it all in 7 days.
In our culture there also is no such thing as Heaven or Hell, angels, demons, Satan, Purgatory, etc. There is "walking on" to whatever the next life is after we leave this one. We don't worry about it other than to say we work to accomplish as much while we have this life as we can, as our responsibility is to care for our world and prepare and preserve it for the next 7 generations to come. Our cultures are earth based and much more closely related to other earth based religions such as Wicca and Paganism. We pray to the moon, the sun, the water, the land, the trees, the animals... we pray to everything as well as the Grandfathers of the 4 directions and our Creator.
When I began my transition yrs ago the first thing that struck me as a conflict was "who we pray to" and how we do it. The more I studied and learned the more I began to understand that the role of our Creator also differs a bit from the Christian God.
So what would you do, as a member of the clergy, to bring this divided group of people together to learn, regardless of or in spite of their religious differences, while still teaching the traditional culture we live and believe in? It is nerve wracking to have elders step up and declare we are wrong, in front of a room full of people, and then start with a string of Bible quotes (that aren't even accurate most times, like the white bird/eagle thing). I don't even know where to begin with that???
Help?
I should also mention that most of those residential boarding schools were run by the Catholic Church. That matters. There were other religions who ran a few here and there also, but the majority were controlled and run by Catholic priests and nuns. Today the majority of our indigenous peoples are Catholic.