AN ACT OF MINISTRY, preaching in Native American communities naturally comes from elders. At her fifty-seventh wedding anniversary feast, eighty-year-old Nellie Two Hawk exhorted the community when she said, "In our married life, sometimes even love goes away but the vows of commitment we make will last all of our lives." She understood and used the power of the spoken word. This is a significant power in cultures that are still mainly oral ones.
As an ordained Episcopal priest, I understand preaching as a major vehicle accomplishing the task of religion, re-ligio in Latin meaning "to reconnect persons with the sacred and with one another." Preaching as an act of ministry is the act of making all persons relatives of God and kinsfolk of one another. I believe preaching accomplishes this task by stirring the conscience of the listeners, inspiring true thoughts, healing wounded hearts, and bringing listeners into full involvement with the sacred.
I am writing out of a lifelong experience of maturing in Lakota (Sioux) culture, with my childhood home being on the Rosebud Reservation in south central South Dakota. I have been a priest in the Episcopal Church for twenty-six years; I serve as canon at the local Episcopal cathedral and work on theological education for my diocese. I am a tutor for the Master of Divinity by Extension, a Native Ministries program of the Vancouver School of Theology in British Columbia. I am an oblate of Blue Cloud Abbey, a Roman Catholic Benedictine men's community in northeast South Dakota. For the past twenty-two years I have been a professor at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Although my education is in theology and psychology, I am a full professor teaching Native American studies. I also work as a therapist and have a small private practice. I am a traditional Lakota dancer and have studied the Lakota cultural tradition, as is necessary for this role. My main preaching location currently is the predominantly urban Lakota community of Tiospaye Wakan (the Sacred Family) at the Episcopal cathedral in Sioux Falls.
SOCIAL LOCATION
Presenting this discussion as coming from the voice of all Native Americans would be misleading. The concept of "Native Americans" is not a reality. The hundreds of distinctive peoples native to North America have nothing in common except for our experience with the immigration of European peoples and then with American society. Within fifty years of first contact with European immigrants, hundreds of Native communities along the Atlantic seaboard died of previously unknown diseases. By 1890 the Native population of North America had fallen from approximately twenty million to a few hundred thousand. Many Native peoples no longer exist. The peoples who have survived have cultural or religious similarity due only to our common experience with America.
Various terms will be used to speak of Native Americans: "aboriginal people," "First Nations people," "Native people," or simply "The People," the name most Native peoples call ourselves. Usually, the specific nation should be identified, such as Dine or Cheyenne. Doing this would be awkward, however, so the generic designation of "Native people" will be used most frequently when speaking of the people native to this continent. "Lakota" will be used for my nation.
This discussion will be from a Lakota perspective. The usual governmental term for the Lakota Nation is "Sioux." The Lakota people are scattered on reservations across Nebraska, Minnesota, South and North Dakota, Montana, and the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Many more Lakota have migrated to cities all across North America. Taken as an entire people not divided by international borders, the Lakota people are probably the largest Native community on the continent and so are representative of a Native voice.
The image of Native Americans has been shaped by American history, philosophy, legislation, entertainment, and advertising. The common national myth of Native people is nearly identical to the life and culture of the Lakota. This image of "the Indian" was popularized by movies as late as Dances with Wolves. Interwoven with the image of "the Indian" was theimage of a dying race. Native people were understood to be victims of the building of the United States and of inevitable progress. The imagined nomadic lifestyle was characteristic of very few Native peoples, brief in duration, and recent for even the Lakota. The Lakota, during this more recent era, are characterized by a nomadic life living in tipis, riding horseback, and following the buffalo. As the people most like the national myth of "Indians," the Lakota are a reasonable choice for a Native voice in preaching.
This discussion is from the perspective of the Lakota (Sioux) Nation located in South Dakota. South Dakota has eight reservations, but unlike every other state, all the reservations are populated by the people of one nation: the Lakota. In the late 1990s the Lakota population in South Dakota is greater than sixty thousand.
HISTORICAL FACTORS
Native people associate the coming of emigrants from Europe and elsewhere with a resulting experience of population, military, cultural, and spiritual loss. Diseases from Europe decimated Native populations. More than three hundred years of military conflict eventually resulted in the defeat of Native peoples and removal from our ancestral homelands. Removal is the forced relocation to reservations. Leaving an ancestral land base and way of life brought rapid, repugnant, and radical cultural changes to the Lakota as to every other aboriginal people in North America. The material culture of European peoples was admired and mainly welcomed by Native communities, even though a dependency on those commodities weakened the political power of some Native Americans. Concomitant with those changes came a vast body of law including the treaty system. The profound changes in lifestyle drastically altered the spiritual ways that had been the basis of survival of First Nations peoples.
Christianity entered the lives of Native people as an accomplice to the military, political, and cultural forces. Those forces irrevocably altered life as previously known on this continent. Missionaries came with soldiers and government officials. The message of Jesus faded against the blast of cultural change. For Native young people, indoctrination and psychological abuse in schools included memorizing catechisms and kneeling in church. Massacres of entire Native communities stained the Christian reputation of the soldiers and officers. The Christian faith, as introduced to Native people, is not clean.
The Quaker plan was federal policy from 1874 to 1890. The plan resulted from the Quaker appeal to the president to bring order to the, interdenominational competition of the missionaries for Native souls. The plan officially assigned each Native nation to a Christian denomination for missionary effort. So, the Nez Perce were assigned to the Presbyterians. The Crow were eventually assigned to the Baptists. The Lakota Nation was assigned to the Episcopal Church. Some Lakota communities in present?day Minnesota had already welcomed Congregational and Presbyterian missionaries, and they remained. At a later time some Lakota leaders asked to have Roman Catholic missionaries assigned because they were already known. As a result of that assignment, the Lakota had two denominations for an official assignment.
The Episcopalians moved quickly to ordain a Native clergy. Ordination requirements for Catholic clergy seemed to be a barrier to seeking ordination for Lakota Catholics. In recent years a married Lakota diaconate has emerged with vigor in the Catholic Church. Naturally, both denominations translated their worship materials into the Lakota language. The Lakota in eastern South Dakota were evangelized by Benedictine priests and monks, Benedictine nuns, and Presentation sisters. The Lakota west of the Missouri River initially came to know Jesuit clergy and Benedictine nuns. The Episcopal Church relied on white clergy mainly from Atlantic coast states, Lakota priests, deacons, and catechists.
The three major American institutions present in the Lakota community were the federal agency, the educational establishment, which usually took the form of a boarding school, and the Christian church. A collusion frequently developed among the three institutions involved in consciously and unconsciously changing Native American culture and life. Many Lakota accepted the changes as necessary for survival in the new way of life, but many other Lakota became embittered and hostile to all three institutions.
The Christian church was not able to distinguish culture from Christianity in its work with Lakota people. This is partially understandable because the factor of culture is mostly unconscious for everyone. Still, missionaries of the time did not separate their cultural lifestyle from their espoused religious tenets. They made no distinction between what was European culture and what was a teaching of Christianity. The story is told of the elder who asked the missionary what he had to do to be baptized. The reply was, "Cut your hair." The Lakota was doubly puzzled since the stained glass window of the Last Supper clearly showed Jesus and the apostles with long hair. Although there is obvious irony in this story, other confusions of culture with religion are more difficult to identify because of their complexity. For example, early missionaries promoted the Western value of agricultural enterprise as a necessary foundation for living a Christian life. The amalgamation of Christianity with Western culture has been a persistent and ongoing problem for Native people wishing to participate in Christianity.
In more recent times government programs have attempted to bring Native peoples into the mainstream of U.S. society through various efforts. In 1924 Native Americans were made citizens of the United States. In 1934 the Indian Reorganization Act made tribes legal corporations with the right to some level of self?government. In the 1950s federal programs moved younger Native people, aged eighteen to thirty-five, into seven target cities of Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Seattle. All of those cities have large populations of Native people today. According to the Bureau of IndianAffairs, by the 1990s more than 85 percent of Native people in the country were living off their reservations and usually in large cities.
Urban life has provided opportunities for Native people to participate in American life more consciously. This participation is not wholehearted but selective. Native people typically choose to engage in aspects of American life that bring benefits but do not require a loss of Native identity or culture. In this respect, Native people are probably the only American minority resisting full participation in American society. Most ethnic minorities seem to desire full participation in American life, but Native people wish certain benefits of society without accepting the entire philosophical or ethical principles of public American culture such as individualism, competition, and free enterprise profit.
Native people have learned skills to survive in American life. These skills enable The People to interact with American institutions to their benefit. The skill of articulating cultural difference is one ability that has helped define Native culture more consciously and deliberately. Defending Native liberties and rights has been possible with an educated community. The long history of treaty making is the basis for the sovereign status of Native people today.
City life also brought Native people together socially and politically. This intertribal alliance is called Pan-Indianism. Pan-Indianism is the political fusion of Native people into a cohesive federation. All of this contact would not have been possible without the language of the majority of Europeans: English.
The distinctive history of Native people is based on a legal and cultural identity that precedes the existence of American society and the introduction of Christianity. A firm grasp of the contact history of Native people with America is necessary to understand the place of preaching in our community today.
A UNIQUE VOICE
Certain philosophical assumptions influence a Native voice. These assumptions lay the foundation of the preacher's thought world as well as the assumptions of the listeners.
KNOWLEDGE BELONGS TO THE COMMUNITY
First, all knowledge, like all material goods, belongs to the collective community. While Native culture respects the freedom of the individual, the experience of this freedom occurs within the context of a communal mentality. Life experience and the discovery of the means to survive have promoted the Native peoples'value of communality over the individual.
It is at this point that Native American values differ the most from Westem values. Not only from the first experiences of life but also through the very last experiences of living this life, Native people know the intensity of belonging to one another, to our communities, and to our homeland. Consequently, all information and thinking begins and ends with the assumption that we are a single unit when together and that we will end up together. For example, discussions of ethics will assume the highest good is the good of the community and not that of the individual. Values such as sharing, generosity, and loyalty are highly esteemed in that they promote the cohesion of the community. Naturally, appeals to individual belief or individual salvation have no attraction to Native listeners.
An effective Native preacher is more likely to conclude any consideration with an exhortation to the values of the Native community, such as helping the poor, the weak, and the elderly. A Native preacher will appeal to the Native ethical standards of sharing, of using just enough resources to survive, of treating others as your nearest kinfolk and relatives as though these are the teaching of the religious hero.
ORAL PROMISES OVER WRITTEN ONES
Second, North American Native cultures are oral societies. One's word and one's words are highly esteemed and have a reality distinctive to themselves. In Lakota society, the words one speaks are regarded as real aspects of the speaker. They are something from that person, just as one's blood or sweat is from that person. In this respect, words are respected as personal and valuable.
In traditional Lakota communities, barbers are known to sweep up the hair of a customer and give it to him as he leaves the barbershop. The spirit of the customer is in that hair; it belongs to him, and yet has an existence of its own. just as we treat a person's hair with respect, as containing something of the person it comes from, so we respect the very words from a speaker. Somehow, the words contain the spirit of the speaker, and yet they have an existence independent of the one who spoke the words.' We quote the words of another person with accuracy and truth because it would be a personal injustice to misquote another's words or intention.
A preacher will be conscientious in citing the words of another and will expect to be corrected by an elder if an error is made. To be expected to speak at any occasion is considered an honor because it is an invitation to give of oneself. To give good words to others is an act of personal generosity, and Native people would recognize it as such.
To make clear an implication of this second aspect: for Lakota people, the spoken word has a power that the written word does not. If one is making an important point, as in promising to do something, it can be believed only when it is spoken. Moreover, what is stated in front of witnesses is considered a vow. An interesting point is that what is in writing has little value as far as Lakota culture goes. Something that is written down is made of little importance. For example, if my family were having a ceremony, and if we wanted certain people to be present, then we would invite them verbally in a face-to-face exchange. If we were to send a written invitation, our lack of spoken words would say that the gathering is of such small importance that we did not bother to put the invitation into words. The preacher, then, has accomplished something important since thoughts and affections have been put into words.
SPEAKING AND LISTENING
The third factor affecting a Native voice relates to Native cultures as oral cultures. In an oral culture, each person must possess high verbal intelligence and develop the best oratorical skills. In Lakota society, at every public gathering, hosts invite well-known speakers to address the gathering. Listening to speakers is a form of learning the ways of The People and providing entertainment as well as enlightenment. Naturally, listening skills are also expected. In historical times, Native children were educated in listening. At one time a five-year-old Lakota could hear one of the memories of The People that would take nearly two hours to hear and repeat what had been heard verbatim.
Listening well requires an accurate memory, no side conversations, no eye contact with the speaker, and as little physical movement as possible since this is understood to convey respect for the speaker. From an early age Lakota young people are encouraged to speak at gatherings and to be prepared to speak when it is appropriate. While traveling to a gathering, Lakota parents tell the young people to prepare what they will say at the gathering and to be ready to say something encouraging to The People.
MULTIPLICITY
A fourth philosophical principle defining Lakota culture and guiding Lakota understanding is a definition of multiplicity. Western culture has a definition of singularity and moves toward that direction. Western governance systems used the principle of single (monos in Greek) origin (arche in Greek), the monarchy. Whether by election or evolution Western governance always assumes one leader. The principle of the singular is also found in Western notions of marriage (monogamy), religion (monotheism, even allowing for trinitarian definitions), creation (uni-verse), and singular conclusions. In contrast, Lakota thinking relies on the multiple. Governance is polyarchic with many "chiefs" in any community and no supreme chief Marriage was mainly polygamous for Native peoples. The spirit world is populated by many spirits, but even this community is considered to be a united whole. Native definitions of the world assume it is a multi-verse with many levels of existence. Conclusions may be multiple and can even consist of many factors that are in logical conflict.
This principle of multiplicity is so significant in Native thinking because it permits full participation in more than one entity without any conflict. It is perfectly possible to be a Lakota and to take full part in a Cheyenne ceremony. One would not be surprised to find a Navajo living fully in a Lakota community. In contemporary times it is possible for a Lakota to take part in our Pipe Religion and still be a full participant in a Christian church. In fact the vast majority of Native people have a dual practice when it comes to religion. Native people would have neither logic nor allegiance problems with full participation in more than one religious system.
The complexity of this principle can be contemplated if one considers being fully involved in both a Roman Catholic and a Baptist church at the same time. All the conflicts that immediately arise in Western, singular-oriented thinking do not even occur in this Native, multiplicity-based understanding. As stated earlier, the wholehearted involvement of Native people in our Native religious system and in Christianity at the same time has major implications for preaching in our communities. Effective preachers rely on stories or principles from both systems to present teachings.
TRADITIONS AS GOD GIVEN
The fifth significant Native perspective involves our understandings of our way of life. Native Christians have theologized about the relationship of our traditional ways to Christianity. Most Native communities view their spiritual and cultural traditions as God given. Among the Lakota we speak of the Lakol Wicoh'an, the Lakota way of life. That our way of life is God given is so essential that we have no word to distinguish religion from daily living. Our way of life consists of our memories of how the world came to be as it is, teachings of our understandings of how the world works, and the ceremonial traditions that make our understandings and meanings our reality. Everything - from common courtesies to complex religious actions - is a part of the Lakol Wicoh'an. Our mythology, basic education, and explanations of our arts and technology are all a part of this Lakota way of life.
Such a significant part of our lives cannot be taken lightly nor can it be discarded, as the early missionaries seemed to think necessary. To treat lightly the way of life revealed to us would constitute blasphemy. How, then, are we to theologize about the Lakol Wicoh'an other than as our own Old Testament? An Old Testament consists of the way of life God has revealed to a people. When the New Testament arrives, it can exist only on the foundation of the Old Testament. In our Old Testament we have the customs and teachings revealed to us by God, just as the Hebrew Scriptures contain the old ways revealed to the Jewish people by God. Their old ways cannot become the Lakota's ways. The Lakota's ways, the Lakol Wicoh'an, are the foundation onto which the teachings of Jesus are to be grafted. Reading the old ways of the Jewish people is instructive for us Lakota, but it cannot become our way of life. We use the Hebrew Scriptures to gain additional insight into the nature of the one God with whom both Jewish and Lakota people have a long-term relationship. These understandings frequently come from having very similar experiences and stories. The Lakol Wicoh'an is the Lakota way of life and the basis of our hearing of Jesus and Jesus' teachings.
Theologians refer to bringing together our way of living with the teachings of Jesus as "inculturation," the process by which the church takes on the symbols, materials, and the conceptual categories of a local population. Inculturation makes the teachings of Jesus incarnate in us as a people. Currently, the church is inculturated into Western European culture. The church's new task is to become inculturated to Native America. This process requires using Native decorative arts, customs, and symbols in worship, and Native concepts for understanding the Savior.
For example, a preacher may use the image of a Lakota sun dancer who makes an offering of his suffering, "that The People may live," as an illustration of the significance of the crucifixion of Jesus. Still another preacher may use the self-giving of the elder from the former world in the form of a buffalo as a type of the way Jesus comes to us in Holy Communion. With inculturation, the faith comes to us as we really are in our situation as it really is.
RELIGION FOCUSES ON THIS LIFE
The sixth principle in a Native voice concerns the purpose of religion. Years ago a joke circulated that told of two young people observing an elderly woman who was reading the Bible. Asked why the grandmother was reading so diligently, one youth replied that she was studying for finals. The joke assumed, of course, that the purpose of Christianity is to achieve some standard, which then permits one into a life after this one. Probably most Native people would have found the joke confusing because Native religion's purpose is to live this life well. The teachings are to guide one into living life completely and appropriately. The ceremonies are to reenact and manifest the revelations and meanings that make living possible and necessary.
Many ceremonies mark events as sacred, which are defined as natural scientific processes in the West. For example, Native people typically welcome the first thunder as the change of season. The sacredness of that moment, that process, is the focus of the ceremony, however that is expressed. So also with marking the dawn. That moment is sacred, and so is rightly remembered by ceremonial observance. To live this life well, Native teaching says, one must know what is sacred, observe the way that has been established and revealed to us, and commit to live in that way as the Creator intended. Religion, in our understanding, makes survival possible.
Native teachings on women exemplify the connection of the sacred to survival. In virtually all of Native America, women are the more necessary sex in a community. Typically, in Native mythologies, heroes are female. In Lakota mythology, our revealer, our messiah, is the White Buffalo Calf Woman. Many of our teachings and nearly all of our ceremonies are revealed by or through her. In many Native communities, women hold most, if not all, property. In numerous Native communities, people mark their ancestry by recounting their mothers. In Lakota society a woman is the most powerful during her menstrual cycle, her "moontime," since this is the sign that she can carry life. A woman is considered very powerful during this moontime because her sacred power is in her ability to carry life, give birth, and help The People survive. The sacred is given so that humanity can survive in this life well.
PREACHING JUSTICE
Four major topics are the focus of preaching justice in Native communitiesgaining legal justice, understanding our cultural ways as God given, healing and spiritual wholeness, and divorcing Western culture from Christianity.
GAINING LEGAL JUSTICE
The first area is that of legal justice. The typical audience here would not be Native people but non-Native listeners who have interest in or obligation to observe legal requirements. The laws of the United States have much to say about the observance of treaties, the covenants made between sovereign nations. Because the existence and status of Native nations were prior to the existence of the United States, early covenants between the United States and Native nations were by treaty. Treaties have status in international law and are called by the U.S. Constitution "the supreme law of the land," indicating the seriousness of their obligation upon the United States. Because the United States does not observe even one of the nearly four hundred treaties it made with Native nations, a call to justice must include a call to observe Indian treaties. Although the international reputation of the United States is negatively affected by its nonobservance, seldom do preachers other than Native ones bring up this issue.
The Hebrew Scriptures create the image of Israel as possessing its land. That land was occupied by other peoples when the descendants of Abraham went there. What of those people? Was not the land in their possession? Native Americans are more like the Canaamtes than the people of Israel. During speeches on national holidays, Americans typically draw on the heroic image of creating a new promised land. For Native people, the same images are hollow or bitter. Perhaps more could be learned regarding just relationships between Natives and Newcomers by meditating on the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, the meeting of Abram (later to be Abraham) and Melchizedek, the local medicine man. In their encounter, they honor each other by giving what they have. Abram offers a tithe of the booty he carries with him; Melchizedek offers the fruit of the land where he had lived all along, bread and wine, the signs of the messianic presence. Should the United States meet its treaty obligations, Native America would surely see that time as messianic and a period of justice.
A related area of legal justice stands out for Native people who are now minorities in our own homelands. A minority is a social group that is defined as less than the dominant group. While it may or may not be true that the minority is in fact less, the definition of being less persists. Minority status is not necessarily defined by race, although in American society racial difference does define one as less. Minority status is defined not by numbers but by low social and political status. Native Americans typically are both visually and economically invisible. Virtually all social indicators, including educational status, earning power, health care, life expectancy, and housing, show Native Americans as the least of all Americans. Other ethnic groups stand higher on social indicators. Consequently, the teachings of Jesus concerning care for the least in society give hope to Lakota and all other Native people. No fancy interpolation must be made from the scriptural mandates as far as Native people are concerned. God's care for the poor must surely mean God cares for Native people.
Probably every Native person can recount innumerable experiences with racism and discrimination. Whether it is children mocking media images of Native dances or school materials that consider Native people as museum tenants, racism persists. Even recent groups that claim to honor Native people, such as New Age religious followers, fall into racial stereotypes. They go to great lengths to find personal Native ancestry so that they can claim mystic knowledge. If they cannot find any Native ancestry in their history, then being a medicine man, or worse, a princess, in a former life will do. The underlying presumption is that Native spiritual knowledge is genetic and racial. Regardless of the form of racism, the promise of God is that justice will prevail, that we are loved by God, even if no one else can see us clearly.
UNDERSTANDING OUR CULTURAL WAYS
The second area for preaching justice to Native people is based on our understanding of our cultural ways. If God gives us our cultural ways, then we cannot disregard them. For a Lakota, knowledge of the Lakol Wicoh'an is integral to self-understanding. A true relationship with God is not possible if we do not know ourselves, for we are party to the relationship as much as God is. For a Native person, self-knowledge includes knowing the way of life we have been given. Yet this very knowledge was forbidden or suppressed for at least a generation. The experience of my parents during their years at a boarding school is typical of their generation. They found their language and ways of living denigrated and suppressed by teachers, administrators, and chaplains. For many Native people this suppression resulted in a loss of knowledge of what made them who they are. The absence of enculturation (not to be confused with inculturation, discussed earlier in this chapter), the process by which a child learns to function within his own culture, created a break in Native cultures. This break is not just a loss of some knowledge base, but it also creates an absence of internalized values. Without internalized values an individual is left to follow personal whim and appetite rather than function according to community standards. As a therapist, I have seen this dynamic more than once with Native American clients.
Still other losses can occur. When Native young people attended residential schools, they lost the living experience of their family wisdom. They did not see couples successfully resolve conflicts. They did not see parents successfully raise children. Most adults rely on this observed learning from experience for interpersonal situations. Native Americans who attended residential schools did not build this area of learning, and they frequently suffer problems in family living. Restoring the social and interpersonal skills from the cultural tradition can create a higher quality of life.
This building of the cultural tradition on the personal level is a task of justice, since the way of life has been given by the Creator. A preacher's role, then, would include defining and explaining the traditional way of life as a purpose for living. The preacher would explain the joys and obligations of being a Lakota in addition to being a Christian. Simply knowing that a cultural tradition exists often gives hope to Native people. Because that cultural tradition is theirs, Native people will have a greater allegiance to this culturally appropriate form of teaching. Restoration of the lost way of life for Native people is akin to the restoration of the people of Israel after the Babylonian exile. Turning to that period in the Hebrew Scriptures provides a model of wholeness for Native Christians.
HEALING AND SPIRITUAL WHOLENESS
Perhaps the greatest area of preaching for Native Christians lies in the realm of healing. From historic times, Native communities have defined health as a spiritual wholeness, and it is achieved through religious effort. Spiritual power has always been a healing power. For the past five hundred years Native people have known the brokenness that comes from suppression and destruction in all forms. Typically, Native participants in church life come with a variety of ills that need healing. Preaching justice would name the wounds, exorcise the evil forces that created the injury, and pronounce freedom and triumph through a relationship with the living God. The justice preacher addresses these ills and pronounces the healing that comes from God.
Recently, a significant church effort in Native communities has involved a dynamic called healing circles. In a communal setting, participants speak about their woundedness, and they receive encouragement from others. In one such setting I was asked to make the concluding remarks after participants spoke. My words were, "Get over it." I left a long pause. "Get over it because that is what God wants for you." The listeners were stunned by the opening, but then knew that they were not to get stuck on just naming their hurts without seeking the necessary healing. First Nations people have many wounds from the past. The word from God is that wholeness can be theirs for the asking and for the work involved. The preacher of justice advocates a transformation of social injustice and resistance to it in its many forms.
The most pervasive health issue for Native people is alcohol abuse. Many Native persons have come to work recovery using the twelve step recovery programs. The designers of twelve step programs had their foundation in the spiritual healing tradition of the Christian church. Native people often find a solid recovery by working the twelve steps in conjunction with a revitalized learning of their tribal traditions.
Often called the Red Road approach, this healing relies on the person's allegiance to Native identity and the spiritual healing of twelve step programs based in Christian teachings. The principle of abstinence, for example, could be presented as a return to Native tradition since intoxicants were not produced or utilized among Native people in North America. The fifth step of admitting past wrongs to God and another person is a form of confession. It could be presented to a Native person as a cleansing, a familiar concept in nearly all Native cultures.
DIVORCING WESTERN CULTURE FROM CHRISTIANITY
Perhaps the biggest task for the preacher addressing Native American Christians is the task of divorcing Western culture from Christianity. In the entire history of Christian missions among First Nations people, seldom has a clear distinction been made between the teachings of Jesus and the tenets of Western culture. Since there was no distinction between culture and Christianity in the minds of early missionaries, that distinction is sometimes difficult for Native people to understand, let alone make with any certainty.
Numerous examples of this confusion can be cited. A Lakota elderly woman on hearing drum music in a eucharistic service was asked if she recognized the song. Her reply was that she was raised an Episcopalian. In another setting she would have known the song in all probability. Still another example comes from the altar guilds, which have care of the linens and altar cloths. Some contend that only items imported from England or from the East Coast are appropriate for church use. Perhaps the greatest chasm exists between Native persons who feel called to the ministry but who must first earn Western academic credentials to minister with any recognition. All of these examples show the necessity for some distinction to be made between the officiousness of the church and the Christian faith.
On at least one Lakota reservation the seminary-educated Lakota priest said that nothing Lakota should be used in the church. The result was a deep antagonism between younger Lakota people and the Christian faith. Since, in the past, becoming Christian meant sacrificing Lakota culture and identity, the call to live the faith in every culture must be spoken. This is not to say that culture supersedes the teachings of Jesus. Indeed, the teachings of Jesus are contrary to every culture, including American culture. just as the teachings of Jesus correct some aspects of Lakota culture, so should they correct flaws in the culture of America.
The institution of the church has been an enemy of Native people, frequently causing a kind of cultural genocide as a requirement for being a Christian. For the faith to be seen clearly by Native listeners today, a clear distinction must be made between that former enemy and the faith of Jesus.
The Old Testament of Native peoples must be recognized as a clear foundation for the new life in Christ. In Lakota thinking, there is no such thing as original sin. One must preach from some other basis than the substitution theory of the crucifixion. In Lakota thinking there is no such thing as evil but simply the recognition that things'just are. To begin to evangelize on the basis of needing Jesus to wipe away the condemnation of original sin would have no effect on any Native community.
The need for healing, both personal and communal, is strongly recognized by most Native people. That Jesus brings healing of both soul and body has a strong appeal to the experiences of contemporary First Nations people. There is a long-standing cultural basis for the healing tradition in nearly all Native cultures. Achieving wholeness so The People may live is a goal of all Native traditions. This aspect of the Christian faith, healing of body and soul, is the greatest asset of the church as far as Native Americans are concerned.
ONE URBAN NATIVE COMMUNITY
Tiospaye Wakan (the Sacred Family) is the urban Native Christian community in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It is a portion of the total congregation of the Episcopal cathedral. Attendance varies greatly from 45 to 250, depending on the occasion, weather, and other factors. Native people usually make up go percent or more of the attendees. The average age is about twenty years old. Nearly all of those attending services are Lakota, but Crow, Hidatsa, Mandan, Ojibwa, Navajo, and members of other Native nations attend as well. Not all who attend are Episcopalian; some are Roman Catholic, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian, or Mennonite. Nearly two-thirds of the congregation are persons working some kind of recovery program, usually a twelve step program. All but one or two persons who attend are poor. Some live on the streets of Sioux Falls and rely on the local soup kitchen and shelters for.their survival.
In preaching to this community there is little need to speak of the hardships in life. There is little value in preaching about the need to avoid sin. Many members of the congregation have endured tragedies all their lives. Many are resigned to lives of poverty and political disfranchisement.
The design of every successffil sermon to this community relies on three elements. The first element is a lesson taken from the Gospels. Typically, an action of Jesus or his teaching will form the basis of the sermon. Frequently, some explanation of the teaching must be given. The second element of the sermon is a connection of the teaching to Lakota cultural tradition. Since many are not familiar with their cultural tradition, some teaching must be done to explain the tradition's origin and meaning. The third element of the sermon is the application of the teaching to living well, usually by touching on some aspect of the twelve step recovery programs.
The preacher briefly explores these three elements to set the background for the lesson in the sermon. The message of the sermon is best conveyed in a story familiar to the preacher or perhaps taken from Lakota mythology. In Lakota oratorical tradition, it is considered bad manners to explain the message. Once a story is told, it is left to the listener to interpret and apply the message. Consequently, the groundwork must be laid carefully before the story is told. If a story is told well, then it will speak to the heart, not to the mind only, but to the whole person. That is, it will be understood at a deep and wordless level. Almost never will there be any discussion or compliment to a well-composed homily. The sign the message has reached the heart is signaled by eyes moist with tears and nothing more.
This threefold foundation for preaching justice in my community has years of thought in it. The Gospel, the Lakol Wicoh'an, and the application to a survival model such as the twelve step program are all the groundwork for preaching to a contemporary Native American community.
CONCLUSION
Essentially, then, the major images used to preach justice in Native communities include the healing ministry of Jesus, the cultural traditions as Old Testament, and the love of God for those considered the least in the world. All of these images bring comfort and a deep truth to Native Christians.
Preaching as an act of ministry connects the lives of the listeners with the living God and teaches them that they are relatives to one another. Effective preaching in Native American communities requires that the preacher have some knowledge of history since the lives of present-day Native people have been heavily affected by the past. A preacher of justice for Native people will proclaim triumph over the dynamics of racism, cultural discrimination, broken treaties, and social injustices toward ethnic minorities. All of these social factors have a strong impact on the life of every contemporary Native person.
A loving preacher will connect Native people with our cultural traditions and through this unite us to the loving God. An appreciation for an inculturated Christianity will speak to Native people as our lives are. Native people have survived for untold centuries on this continent. We have a history of creative, successful cultures. We are a people who have also known captivity, defeat, and exile. We have seen our lands overtaken by other peoples. Like the people of Israel, we have longed for someone who would help us. We have found that in the medicine man Jesus. We believe he is one of us, the Native people, and that his closeness to the Creator has given him the teachings to a way of life that will help us survive.