Letter of An Indigenous Future

Last week, Auburn’s Letter to the Future from Elizabeth Le’anani Coffee, Director of Storytelling at the H.E. Butts Foundation, offered a vision for how faith communities can transform their communities. To get to the local transformation Elizabeth suggested, Auburn’s Center for Storytelling and Narrative Change addresses religious narratives that have harmed society.

One narrative the Center for Storytelling and Narrative Change has and will continue to focus on is the theological violence against Indigenous communities in North America. This week’s letter addresses that history and points to a recent partner who is doing the work of intergenerational healing.

Dear Friends of Auburn,

Recently, it was suggested that a person could not be more than one thing. When we write this, people may think we are talking about a presidential candidate suggesting that about another candidate. However, another claim was being made far from the spotlight of national politics.

At St. Joseph’s Apache Mission in Mescalero, New Mexico, a local priest decided to take down an 8-foot tall icon titled “Apache Christ,” telling congregants and community members, “You cannot be Apache and Christian.” He did this following floods and fires that had devastated the community. The icon was returned, but community members wrestled with the theological challenge to their identity.

As you read this email, Apache Stronghold leaders are marching across the US to defend their right to live and worship on their sacred lands. Since 2013, Oak Flat – known as Chi’chil Bildagoteel in Apache – in Central Arizona has been under siege by Resolution Copper. Apache Stronghold has appealed to the courts on the grounds of Religious Freedom to maintain their right to practice religious ceremonies and culture on these sacred grounds.

The dismissal and erasure of Indigenous rights to culture and practice is not new. Outright war and cultural genocide tarnish our collective history. In particular to the church, 523 Indian Boarding Schools were opened in the USA. In 1819, one year after Auburn’s founding to pioneer and train those who might serve in the Western territories, the Civilization Fund Act was passed granting Christian Churches funds to go into “Indian Territories” and teach Indigenous children Christian culture. Under this act, the first schools and missions were created laying the groundwork and theological justification for Indian Boarding Schools in the US.

In 1868, Grant’s Peace Policy gave Christian denominations power over programs run on reservations, replacing “corrupt Indian agents,” with Christian missionaries. A decade later and three generations after the Civilization Fund Act, the first Indian Boarding School was founded in 1879. Carlisle Indian Industrial School, founded by Richard Henry Pratt, forcibly removed children from Indigenous communities. Pratt, famous for saying, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” also made a theological case to preachers for religious participation in the boarding schools:

> In Indian civilization, I am Baptist, because I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we get them under holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked.

Pratt used a theology of baptism to justify what was in practice drowning culture out of children.

Cases for religious and cultural purity and then providing the infrastructure to practice the eradication of culture through the “education” of children is a sin this nation continues to commit. From the history of Boarding Schools and the government’s removal of people and the defacing of the sacred land of Indigenous communities, the erasure of identity, culture, and religious practice has always had a theological justification alongside it.

A healed future is one where Indigenous communities no longer contend with the theological and religious justifications for the erasure and eradication of culture and practice.

So we are asking, how do we heal from this history? What theological resources and practices can we draw on to participate in generational healing?

We listen to stories. We respond to theological justifications with theologies that affirm the humanity of every person. More importantly, we learn from those who have led in the spiritual and religious healing in the aftermath of these events.