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Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori on the Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery

I urge you to learn more about the Doctrine of Discovery and the search for healing in our native communities.

But this is also a matter for healing in communities and persons of European immigrant descent.  Colonists, settlers, and homesteaders benefited enormously from the availability of “free” land, and their descendants continue to benefit to this day.  That land was taken by force or subterfuge from peoples who had dwelt on it from time immemorial – it was their “promised land.”  The nations from which the settlers came, and the new nations which resulted in the Americas, sought to impose another culture and way of life on the peoples they encountered.  Attempting to remake the land and peoples they found “in their own image” was a profound act of idolatry.

Repentance and amendment of life are the answer, and God asks us all – this Church, our partners and neighbors, and the nations which were founded under the Doctrine of Discovery – to the challenging work of reconciliation.

The abundant life we know in Jesus Christ is made possible through sacrifice – through repairing what is broken, and finding holiness and healing in the midst of that challenging work.  That work is often costly, but it is the only road to abundant life.

World Council of Churches’ Statement on the Doctrine of Discovery and Its Enduring Impact on Indigenous Peoples

The Presiding Bishop’s Pastoral Letter on the Doctrine of Discovery

The Doctrine of Discovery: The International Law of Colonialism, conference room paper from the 11th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Conference Room Paper on the Doctrine of Discovery, presented by the Haudenosaunee, the American Indian Law Alliance and the Indigenous Law Institute, North America, at the 11th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

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In commemoration of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (August 9^th), the Global Partnerships Office has been featuring a four-part interview with Nellie Adkins (Chickahominy, Diocese of Virginia), one of fourteen Anglican/Episcopal delegates who participated in the 11^th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues as part of the Anglican Communion’s delegation. The interview runs on this blog every Thursday, August 9^th – 30th. Last week, Nellie shared what it was like to be on the floor of the Permanent Forum. Today, she talks about Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Sarah Eagle Heart’s work with indigenous peoples in repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery, and their witness of presence at the Permanent Forum.

We hope you will enjoy Part Two of the interview with Nellie, and return next week to hear about Nellie’s experiences advocating at the UN and back home, and what it is like to “walk between two worlds”, bringing messages from home and back again.

Global Partnerships: I understand that Bishop Katharine was actually at the Permanent Forum as well to represent the Church?

Nellie Adkins: She was. And she actually did a panel presentation [sponsored by the Office of Indigenous Ministries] in which she certainly adroitly articulated the whole

[repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery]. But then she was on the floor, at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and she just sat there, she listened; it wasn’t like she got up and banged a drum or anything, but just the serenity of her presence, you know, the ongoing beat of life. My dad used to say “What you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you are saying”. She didn’t have to say anything. Her message was loud and clear to me. And I was sooooo proud of her; my heart was so gladdened just to see her there. And I want to tell you that no indigenous person missed a beat on that. They saw her. And it spoke volumes.

GP: We’re very proud of Bishop Katharine and Sarah [Eagle Heart], especially, our Indigenous Ministries Missioner, for heading up this delegation of fourteen. We were also part of an ecumenical caucus and the written statement that Sarah helped to put together with the World Council of Churches and the Anglican Church of Canada. Did you have any contact with anyone from the WCC or any other Christian churches while you were at the Forum?

NA: Yes. A number of people came up and engaged me in dialogue… So I know that there are people on board, who are standing on the edge of the circle and watching and observing with keen interest.

GP: How many countries or areas of the world would you say you saw represented at the UN Permanent Forum?

NA: I would say three quarters of the world was represented.

GP: And in terms of regions? Did you see people from South America, Asia and the Pacific…?

NA: I would say all regions, including the Arctic.

GP: Did it seem that the indigenous people who came were able to speak freely? And were they given the space to dialogue and to express from their own perspectives what the issue means to them?

NA: Most definitely. In fact, I think they probably have more freedom at this Permanent Forum than they do at home. I heard a lot of fear being voiced and it really concerned me. We operate in such freedom here, comparatively speaking. By due process of law, if you want to voice your opinions, you have the freedom to do that. You have the right to protest; you have the right to disagree. I was in a Forum where I heard women say, “Well, you know, we’re doing really well now. We finally, if you’re married, we finally got the right to go outside without our husbands.” And I thought, “Gosh, if I didn’t have that right I’d be dead”, because I’m out all the time, you know? And I just thought, “How can that be?”, but it is how it is. And I think when you operate in basically relatively unleashed freedom, you may be clueless about that. You may think that you’re very smart and that you’re very knowledgeable, but you may be very clueless to the reality that belongs to the majority of the world…I think we really have to focus on women, because that’s an area where in many places it’s still a man’s world. Men can go out and do whatever they want, but a woman is still in some places chattel property. And that disturbs me.

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In commemoration of the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (August 9^th), the Global Partnerships Office has been featuring a four-part interview with Nellie Adkins (Chickahominy, Diocese of Virginia), one of fourteen Anglican/Episcopal delegates who participated in the 11^th session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues as part of the Anglican Communion’s delegation. The interview has been running on this blog every Thursday since August 9^th. Last week, Nellie discussed the progression of her role as an advocate both at the United Nations and back home. During this final week, she share with us some of the personal messages, wishes and dreams of other indigenous peoples that she brought with her to the UN.

Global Partnerships: You have brought some wonderful things from back home to share with us…so Nellie, you’re from the Chickahominy tribe – the things that you’ve brought to share with us, are they from that tribe?

Nellie Adkins: Actually, they are not. Although the Chickahominy town or the Chickahominy tribe is part of the Powhatan confederacy, aka Pocahontas’s people. Pocahontas Matoaka was a Powhatan Confederacy woman, she was originally from a place called Uttamusack, which in our language means “a sacred place” and that is today is known as the Pamunkey Reservation or in our language, Pomonkie. Pamunkey Reservation is the oldest reservation in the United States of America; it dates back to two treaties with the King of England… We had wampum belts, they were treaty belts, the old moniker or the old saying was “the wampum belts don’t lie”. So if you had a wampum belt in your hand, that was your word. That meant that you spoke straight. What happened was I, as a consultant to Warren County Public Schools in Northern Virginia, teach seminars to teachers who are required to recertify every year. I teach all of the Virginia Indian units of instructions. One of my teachers is a man [whose] mother is an Eastern Abenaki person. …When he found out I was coming to the United Nations, he called his clan mother and they wanted to gift me with a bag, so they made this bag for me. It’s made of mink, and there’s beadwork here, and there are beaten pennies on it. Inside the bag were several items, and the wampum belt is in here. It’s wrapped in red calico which is traditional; it means that it’s sacred…there are many wampum belts, and many of them have different meanings. [This particular wampum belt] means that because I am native and white, that I walk in two worlds, and also because I was coming to the United Nations, I’m walking in two worlds…It was gifted to me mainly by the Eastern Abenaki people [and] a consortium of New England native indigenous people.

GP:  And it was especially for this particular UN Permanent Forum?

NA: When I spoke, they wanted me to have this, to tell people that my words were straight…and so this belt means that I walk in two worlds. It was kind of like God sending me a message: you’re a Christian and you’re indigenous. And that’s walking in two worlds. And that’s the only thing that matters to me. You know, this too shall pass. The [United Nations] building is there now, but it may not be always there.

[There was also] a native woman in the group who had been mistreated and the focus of a lot of our conferences. She sent this bag that she had made – it’s a leather bag and it’s filled with kinickkinick, which is our sacred tobacco. Kinickkinick can be dried and you can either put some in a dish or you can just lay this pouch on the table and they can put their hands on it and it’s like a solemn oath or a blessing. So to me that meant a lot, because they said that this woman had been really badly damaged as a native woman and that her heart was to send this to me. She doesn’t even know me.

I felt like I had the good wishes and the prayers of all of those people through my student, one of the teachers who is indigenous, and they said, “We cannot send you to the United Nations to represent the Episcopal Church and our people without sending a wampum belt.” So someone made that wampum belt for me…It’s quite a message. So everywhere I went, I carried it with me. I didn’t speak at the UN – I didn’t feel that that was my place at this time – but the point was that I had it, I took it in, when I was smudged at one of the panels, I had them smudge the bag as well. Because I just thought, you know, this is a sacred place.

GP: What a wonderful gift. If you think about it, you do bring so many people with you as a delegate. Not only their experiences, but they combine with your own, and then yours combine here with those of so many other people around the world, and then you take that home.

NA: And then you take that home. It’s a circle.

GP: And you have something else to show us…

NA: We had some conference calls prior to the event, so we had a lot of people say, “Well, I‘ll bring this, and I’ll bring that”. A bark rattle is the main item of percussion for our people. And so every late spring we usually slip the bark of striped maple trees and we cut off larger limbs so that the entire tree isn’t damaged or crippled. Because the bark slips so readily off of the branches, you just take a long piece of bark and you can literally fold it while it’s green into itself. At that time the bark is literally like a green strip, it’s very, very beautiful and a lot of the time, we will etch the effigy of a turtle or something like that on to the bark, scratch it into the bark. Then you have the opening, the aperture, and you either can put small corn kernels in or small pebbles. Then you would cut off or break off a piece of the branch and stuff the hole with it, and then eventually you would wrap a piece of leather around it. So then you end up having a really awesome rattle. I [have personally witnessed] some traditional singers and dance leaders [lead] up to 500 people in a dance with only one of these rattles for cadence, and it is readily heard throughout the area. So it’s pretty awesome, and you just literally strike it on your hand or whatever to make that sound [Nellie strikes rattle against her hand].

GP: Is there anything that you can sing for us or a poem you can recite from your tradition to go along with the rattle, or would you do it separately?

NA: This is a praise song that I’ve heard sung by people from the Choctaw nation, from the Chelogee nation, Chickasaw people, our people, I even heard a Lutheran priest at an American Indian scouting conference actually do a variation. I think it would be readily incorporated into a parish here in New York if they wanted to do something like that. The only word you’re using is “Alleluia” … if people wanted to put that into gear in their parishes, they would just sing that three times. [Nellie sings “Alleluia”]

GP: Amen! Thank you so much, Nellie, we’re going to take that back to our parishes, and hopefully next year at the UN. Thank you so much for representing the Episcopal Church at this year’s UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. And we thank Sarah Eagle Heart, our Missioner for Indigenous Ministries and all the other participants in this year’s delegation. We hope that it will be the first of many more to come. Thank you so much, Nellie, and God bless you!

NA: Oneh.

The Episcopal Church thanks the Anglican Communion for making possible its presence at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, as part of the Anglican Communion’s delegation.

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Dear Relatives,

Cante Waste ya Nape Ciyu zape ye. I greet you from my heart. As we approach Easter and springtime amidst the many various Lenten disciplines I’m sure you have devoted yourself to, I pray you and your loved ones are well. Lent is a time of reflection and learning, it is fitting that most of Lent I’ve spent my time devoted to sharing the experiences of Indigenous Women with Violence, nationally and internationally at the United Nations, through the Lens of Doctrine of Discovery.

Last Thursday, women across America celebrated the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. This law includes programmatic support for Native survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault; with constitutionally sound tribal jurisdiction provisions authorizing tribal governments to prosecute non-Indian defendants involved with intimate relationships on tribal land. Prior to the enactment of this law, federal laws did not authorize tribal law enforcement or tribal courts to pursue any form of prosecution or justice against these perpetrators.

This law was passed with a myriad of passionate voices joining together calling their elected representatives, tweeting and Facebook advocating their stories for protections for LGBT, tribal, campus and immigrant victims as well as taking the next steps to improve our nation’s response to rape and prevent domestic violence homicides. The Episcopal Public Policy Network (EPPN) called our membership to a coordinated action (http://advocacy.episcopalchurch.org/action) and I shared my own story with the Episcopal Church and larger community through an EPPN blog post:  http://advocacy.episcopalchurch.org/blog. Wopila! Thank you!

Currently, women from across the world are at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women 57 (UNCSW) advocating on the theme: “”Elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls.“ They are sharing their stories, providing workshops, teaching best practices, and lifting each other up through this movement. The Episcopal Church works with the Anglican United Nations Office joining Ecumenical Women, an international coalition of church denominations and ecumenical organizations which have status with the Economic & Social Council (ECOSOC) at the United Nations (http://ecumenicalwomen.org/category/csw-57/).

I have attended United Nations events since 2008 and it’s my great honor to be able to connect devoted and dedicated indigenous advocates at the United Nations. The Office of Indigenous Ministry has partnered with the Native American Council of Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati to co-sponsor delegations to the UNCSW and also the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) for the past 3 years. Together, we have accomplished action that follows our pursuit for reconciliation, justice and peace.

Last May, we coordinated a joint advocacy effort on the UNPFII theme: “Doctrine of Discovery” with a panel including: Sarah Augustine from Mennonite Central Committee, Cheryl Kennedy Chairwoman of the Grand Ronde Nation, Law Professor Robert Miller and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of The Episcopal Church. This panel was sponsored by the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, the World Council of Churches, the Mennonite Central Committee, the World Federation of Methodist and Uniting Church Women, The Grail (an international women’s movement), the Gray Panthers, U.F.E.R. – International Movement for Fraternal Union among Races and Peoples, Suriname Indigenous Health Fund, the NGO Committee on the U.N. International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, the Salvation Army, the World Christian Student Federation, and Office of the Chaplain of the Church Center for the United Nations. For more information on this panel, please read http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2012/05/07/ecumenical-panel-kicks-off-un-forum-on-indigenous-issues/.

The Episcopal Church also supported two conference papers at the 11^th Sessesion of the UNPFII including: The Doctrine of Discovery: The International Law of Colonialism, and Conference Room Paper on the Doctrine of Discovery, presented by the Haudenosaunee, the American Indian Law Alliance and the Indigenous Law Institute, North America. To learn more about our coordinated effort, please read here: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/page/repudiation-doctrine-discovery.

This year, the UNCSW delegation has included women from the Anglican Council of Indigenous Women who have devoted their ministry to advocating on Environmental and Violence issues through the Lens of the Doctrine of Discovery, coordinating with Ecumenical Women, Anglican Women’s Empowerment, The Episcopal Church, Anglican Communion, and Foro Internacional de Mujeres Indígenas – FIMI/International Indigenous Women’s Forum – IIWF. This year’s delegates all have experience working with Violence Against Women in their communities and they will post their stories throughout the week at http://anglicancouncilofindigenouswomen.wordpress.com/.

This week I reflect upon the strength and wisdom of the White Buffalo Calf Women, who brought the sacred pipe and teachings to the Oceti Sakowin (the seven council fires) of the L/N/Dakota people, and the story of faith by the saint Perpetua and her companions. I thank the many individuals who continue to connect around common goals through faith and spirituality to advocate on behalf of our indigenous people and the many people around the world struggling with violence.

Pilamayaye, Sarah

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By: Sarah Eagle Heart

In 2009, the Episcopal Church became the first church to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery with several churches following our lead, including the World Council of Churches in February 2012. In order to educate our church on resolution D035 “to Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery,” this event brought stories of indigenous peoples to churchwide leaders by Indigenous Ministries officer Sarah Eagle Heart, with Social and Economic Justice officer the Rev. Chris Johnson and Lifelong Christian Formation officer Ruth Ann Collins. The story offerings came from several areas of the church to demonstrate how the Episcopal Church’s involvement in the Doctrine of Discovery has led to issues Indigenous people face today.

The event was held in the Grand Ballroom of the JW Marriott hotel in Indianapolis, the same room used for all of the worship at General Convention 2012. However, for the lament, chairs were set up in concentric circles in the middle of the huge room. In the center of the circle was a large table covered in purple cloth and votive candles in thick glass blocks. There were over 200 people sitting around the circle, including five vested bishops, and many other bishops, clergy, and lay people of the church. The six presentations were layered with prayers, scripture reading, songs, silence, and the “drum.” The drum – a group who sings and plays – was the Red Leaf Singers from the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. The music team included Ron Braman (Eastern Shoshone), piano and voice; and Hovia Edwards (Shoshone-Bannock), a Grammy-nominated flutist.

Another very important partner in educating the church on the Doctrine of Discovery has been the Native American Council of Christ Church Cathedral in Cincinnati. Without them, none of this work would’ve been possible.

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By: Terry Star

Working With Youth

My name is Terry Starr, and I’m a deacon serving in the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota. My parents have always been involved with community activities for youth. My extended family includes the children and teens from the many communities we’ve lived in. Since high school, I, too, have been involved in work with teens; I’ve made a career out of working with teens. I worked as a teacher and tutor in a high school for seven years. I served as cultural director for a group home in Spokane. I worked as a treatment technician for a juvenile treatment center for Native youth. Most recently, and for the past eight years, I have been involved in youth ministry and have been employed as an area director for a youth ministry program in partnership with my congregation. All of these experiences have given me the opportunity to be in the midst of their lives, to witness their struggles and to encourage their gifts.

Struggles That Our Youth Are Facing

One of my boys, Matthew, was asked what he had planned for his life. He replied, “Well, my uncles are drunks and my cousins are drunks, and I’ll probably be a drunk too.” Another of my boys, Thomas, was homeless. He spent the night in a cousin’s house because he had no place else to go on a cold spring night. The house exploded, and Thomas suffered severe burns over 25% of his body, mostly because he was the last one out of the house, making sure the babies in the house were safe. His cousin, one of my girls, also homeless, died a few months later from burns she suffered in the fire.

Many of the teens I work with are living in overcrowded houses. Finding three or four families living in a three-bedroom house is very common. High-school students in these living conditions don’t find a quiet study place for homework. Students are often tardy or absent from school because their home was the party place the night before. Incest and rape is a common and sad occurrence in these living conditions. Suicide rates are at an extreme high, higher than any other cultural community, because our teens just don’t see a way out.

Gifts of Youth

Life in our communities isn’t all bleak. My experiences working with our youth has also given me the awesome witness of their gifts and talents. Shawn, Trent, Austin, Martin, Draven, and Cole are a few of my boys who choose to live “above the influence.” Though they still stay up all night, they choose to write lyrics, kill zombies, develop stories – all without alcohol or other drugs.

This group of boys help me set up the youth group space, and return it back to order. They gather together with “chip-ins” for gas to take a “guys’ day out” with their Young Life leaders in a youth group van. Ferby and Trent went with me to Minot, North Dakota, where we installed insulation in Jody’s house. Jody’s house was ruined during a major flood that destroyed a third of the city. Jody wasn’t eligible for any of the flood relief assistance, but through Episcopal Relief & Development, and with the help of people like Ferby and Trent, her house was saved and rebuilt. Another group of teens, led by Ferby and his Young Life leaders, helped build a sandbag wall to save a home from flooding in Bismarck, North Dakota. Ferby went door to door in his community, waking up his peers to get in the van to go help build the wall.

The Spirit Journey Youth run their own center, the Hozhoni Youth Center in Arizona. Their director is a young man whose life was changed by his participation in the youth group. It is a great joy to read their daily journals on Facebook. I find encouragement in my own life by reading their stories.

Being a Native in the 21st Century is a very different experience than what our ancestors lived.

Generational Cultural Dynamics

My grandmother grew up in an era of the church that held the belief that indigenous peoples had to put away their cultural identities in order to be Christians, and that we had to be Christian in order to show that we had been assimilated into the mainstream American culture. When Grandma Lillian sent me to school, she told me to pay attention to my teachers so they could teach me how to survive in the Wasicu world. She taught me about our cultural ceremonies, customs, and family history, but told me I had to keep it secret because we need to learn how to be Indians in this new world. I am a deacon in this church. I am learning to speak my language through the liturgy and music that has been translated into Dakota. I wear my feathers and beadwork during Sunday worship ceremonies. Today’s teens have access to the entire world through satellite TV and the Internet. Some of my teens tell me about their online gaming friends from all over the country. Some of my current teens are Facebook friends with my adopted relatives on other reservations.

Mission groups that come to the Standing Rock reservation aren’t coming to the reservation to save the poor Indian kids, but rather to make new friends and tear down the stereotypes and institution of racism. As I am serving as deputy here at General Convention, 800 miles away from home, I am also coordinating camp recruitment via Facebook, Twitter, and texting with staff and teens at home.

While it can be easy for us to focus on the challenges of being a Native in the 21^st century, I believe it is far more important to realize that we are a changing and growing culture with rays of hope shining through. I am excited about our youth and the future they build for our indigenous people. Black Elk said that it would take seven generations from Wounded Knee before the Sacred Hoop can begin to heal. I believe we are witnessing the beginning of this healing.

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By: Newland Smith

My place in the story of this nation is clearly rooted in New England, an unambiguous Exhibit A of a Connecticut Yankee whose eighteenth-century forebear was Hezekiah Smith.

Hezekiah Smith, who was born in Barrington, Rhode Island, in 1726, took up farming in Woodstock, Connecticut, and in 1764 moved to Colrain, Massachusetts, where he continued farming and also fought in the American Revolution. Just to the west of Colrain is the town of Heath, where my grandfather purchased an old farmhouse on the Oxbow. Further down that Oxbow are the few remains of Fort Shirley, one of the line of forts from the Connecticut River to the New York border built in the 1740s to protect the English settlers in the lower Connecticut valley from Indians coming down from Quebec.

I remember as a young person reading a number of times The Boy Captive of Old Deerfield, a fictional account of the experiences of a boy taken captive in the French and Indian raid on Deerfield in February 1704, in which 56 colonists were killed and 109 taken captive. The message was clear: my forebears, those English newcomers, by settling in Deerfield, had placed a claim on the land that denied that of the region’s Native Indians. Even though it was implicit, the Doctrine of Discovery was alive in my upbringing as I learned about the righteous English Puritan colonialists who were brutally attacked and taken captive by the French and Native Americans. The Rev. John Williams, one of the captives who was ransomed, described his return from captivity as the return to Zion. John Winthrop in his well-known sermon had used the image of the Puritan “city on a hill,” a theological construct that would come to undergird American exceptionalism and the justification for the removal of Native Americans from their lands and the forced assimilation of Native Americans into the dominant culture.

After college this Connecticut Yankee headed west to Chicago, and after library school became librarian and a member of the faculty at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary. Given the history of the Bishop Seabury Mission in Faribault, Minnesota, which became the Seabury Divinity School, and the missionary work of James Lloyd Breck in Minnesota, it was fitting that the Native American Theological Association began conversations with Seabury-Western in the early 1980s to explore ways the seminary could be a place for the preparation of Native Americans for ordination in the Episcopal Church. In November 1985 a consultation on “Theological Education for Native Americans” was convened at Seabury-Western with representation of 19 Native and non-Native persons to address “the need defined as a ‘cohesive, consistent and cooperative’ effort at the national level to respond to a leadership crisis confronting the Episcopal Church in its Native American ministry.” As a result of this consultation, Seabury-Western became the seminary of choice for those Native Americans attending seminary for ordination. Some 20 Native Americans attended Seabury between 1986 and 1992, but for most it was a harrowing experience in spite of the commitments and concerns contained in the document issued by the participants of the November 1985 consultation. One understanding was that “the educational models emerging from this network [of our dioceses, the national committee of Indian work, Native American Theological Association, Seabury-Western, and other supportive agencies] would be “reflective of and responsive to the unique cultural values and traditions of Native American people.” Two of the issues to which attention had to be given immediately were (1) a new, flexible curriculum design that utilizes all training modes, the local schools, the seminaries, and workshops in the field, to meet varied needs of students; and (2) how do we encourage a truly indigenous Native approach in spirituality instruction?

In spite of retaining a Native American chaplain and the occasional service incorporating Native American spirituality, this institution of the Episcopal Church failed to work with the Native American network to develop a curriculum that was appropriate for its Native American students and instead expected its Native American students to navigate its Eurocentric curriculum. The syllabus of one of the courses required of all students, Approaches to the Study of Religion and Theology, included readings by Eliade, Ricoeur, and Tillich. There were no courses, even electives, on Native American history, culture, and spirituality. One of the Native American students who was able to graduate shared with me his perspective:

“What the Evanston Covenant really required for complete and successful implementation was a mutual interaction, an equal exchange between modern Native/Indigenous culture and spirituality and mainline Episcopal theological education. The need on the part of the Native students was a community of faculty and students that would understand their backgrounds and styles of learning. Seabury did virtually nothing to empower this process either in campus life or its curriculum. Many of the native students were not prepared for graduate academic work or life in an urban/metropolitan area. Many felt that they were in a ‘sink or swim’ situation. Over half did not complete degrees and some did not make it to ordination. It was essentially a set-up for failure.”

As the librarian, all I did was to produce an annotated bibliography of resources on Native American Indians. Indeed, the ideology of Manifest Destiny fed by the Doctrine of Discovery was very alive during the Evanston Covenant and resulted in a dispirited group of Native Americans and an institution with virtually no insight into the causes of the pain being inflicted.

Just a few minutes ago we heard a reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel – words from the Lord to the prophet living among a dispirited people in Babylonian exile after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. “Mortal,” the Lord said to Ezekiel, “Can these bones (that is the whole house of Israel) live? They say, our bones are dried up and our hope is lost. … But this says the Lord God, I will put my spirit within you and you shall live.”

Is there any hope for the dry bones of Seabury and for myself? Is there any hope that Seabury-Western will engage in truth-telling in light of the Evanston Covenant? In 2000, one of the Native American alums was elected as one of the two alumni trustees by the Diocese of Minnesota. During his time on the Seabury-Western board, he invited the seminary community to engage in a process of truth-telling about the Evanston Covenant that would hopefully lead to reconciliation between the Native American communities and Seabury-Western. Through the leadership of the Anti-Racism Committee, the story of the experiences of some of the Native American students was heard by the seminary community and was incorporated into its wall of institutional history of racism as well as incidents of actions to resist this racism.

But more work needs to be done. Can these bones live? There are signs, tentative as they are, that they can.

As a result of being invited 16 months ago to join a small group charged with the implementation of the 2009 General Convention Resolution, Repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, I have been privileged to join this circle where truth-telling can occur. Not only have I been able to name my place in this story, but I have been able to do this in the presence of two of the Native American members who graduated from Seabury-Western during the years of the Evanston Covenant.

Can these bones live? Yes, if this difficult, painful work of exposing the Doctrine of Discovery continues. May it be so.

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By: Kathryn Rickert

This presentation was given as the third of six offerings in a lament over the Doctrine of Discovery held on Tuesday, July 10, at the 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, in Indianapolis. As far as I know, the Episcopal Church is the first in history to publicly repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, and this was the first international event of Christian worship to overtly lament the events and consequences so long ignored. It is important to say that since very shortly after the arrival of the “conquistadores” in the Americas, Bartolomé de las Casas and many other Christians have spent their entire lives trying to reverse the tragic direction of colonialism.

I speak of lament in response to this grievous past and present as the daughter of my Norwegian/British-American ancestors. I speak to your heart, from my heart. I am humbled by your presence and willingness to participate in this lament. These are difficult things to say and difficult things to hear.

As God is gracious to us, so may we be gracious to one another for those things that are incomplete and even painful about this lament. It is no small thing that we, the Episcopal Church, took the unprecedented step in 2009 of repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery.

Many, if not most of us, did not learn about the term “Doctrine of Discovery,” nor of the events to which it refers, in school. The Doctrine of Discovery is an umbrella term used in international law referring to a range of papal bulls, royal charters, laws, decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, and policies that justified, made legal, and blessed the Crusades, colonialism, slavery, and ongoing economic and social disparities between those who were here long ago and those who came as “discovers,” “conquistadores,” and settlers. Although many of us knew there were some problems of injustice, violence, and greed associated with the settlement of the Americas, not many grasp the nature and extent of that injustice and violence, carried out in the name of Jesus Christ as the will of God.

Although nothing we do today can remove that past, there is a great deal of healing, understanding, and transformed vision to be gained from a thoughtful, prayerful study and reflection on our history. A modest understanding of the reasons used to justify the injustice, violence, and greed cannot help but transform the way we see ourselves and each other.

We dare not pretend that this lament will undo the past or make everything okay. It will not do that. Yet, because we do believe that “God cares for all of us,” and because we long to live in that care for each other and with all of Creation, we gather to open this wound, very gently, by lamenting together – to cast this great grief upon God; not to leave it there as checked off from a list of things to do, but as an act of discipline and hope in response to God’s grace offered to us all.

We offer this lament so that we might move together into a new kind of future – one not founded on false understandings of the nature of our past and present. Tonight, we begin cautiously to put flesh on the bones of that repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery.

What Is a Lament?

The prayer of lament is a type of honest, daring, intimate discourse, demonstrated by a note I received from my daughter when she was 10 years old: “Dear Mommy, I hate you. Love, Mieke.”

A lament is a first person (singular or plural) sound, conveyed with risk, that opens those who lament to God, each other, and to themselves, setting in motion God’s Spirit of compassion, healing, and dignity.

The English the word “lament” comes from an Old Norse word for the sound of the loon – that haunting, unforgettable, pain-conveying sound we hear on the waters in many parts of the world.

Through a practice of communal lament, of which there is a great deal in Scripture and the Psalter of the Book of Common Prayer, over time we can learn how to rejoice and how to weep together. Scripture (Old Testament and New Testament) is abundant with laments in both poetic and narrative forms.

An example of lament poetry is The Psalter, part of the Book of Common Prayer (pp. 585-809), which contains more laments than praise.

Examples of narrative laments include:

Genesis 4:10: “And the Lord said [to Cain], ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”

Romans 8:22-23, 26: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. … Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

We live in a time when this daring prayer is very gradually making a comeback as a fundamental part of the Christian tradition of prayer and worship. The absolute necessity of this kind of prayer is denied, though, when we cannot hear lament as a profound demonstration of love and trust; of a daring opening-up to God and to each other. Lament is not whining, because it risks the relationship rather than merely seeking attention.

In this lament, we come together tonight to cry out to God, and to each other, over the Doctrine of Discovery; to acknowledge, and honor; to lay before God something of this great grief over the violence, genocide, and greed of colonialism – carried out in the name of Jesus.

With our lament, like the sound of the loon, we begin to acknowledge, honor, and give voice to more than 500 years of injustice and distress through our presence, songs, silence, stories, and prayers; witnessing to that distress in our bodies. Lament is a deep bodily practice for acknowledging distress and building compassion and trust, not just the idea of lament.

The prayer of lament is an occasional or temporary practice – not a lifestyle or personality type. It offers many opportunities for learning from each other about injustice, distress, suffering, hope, compassion, honesty, joy, and love – given and received. We do not know each other’s pain. We do not all lament the same things at the same time.

Especially here tonight, some of us sit low in our seats because we know that our ancestors were not kind to your ancestors, and that we have benefited from the grave injustices addressed to you and your people. Others of us may sit here in our seats wondering if this is really necessary. While yet others know only too well why this lament is necessary. This lament is necessary in order to give voice and honor to those who have experienced oppression, injustice, the wounds, the evil, and the suffering that have been far too long ignored. This lament is necessary in order to acknowledge and witness to an unholy past, if there is to be any possibility for coming together as God’s people in a new way:

“with humility in our dealings with one another.
For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

No more arrogance, condescension, and triumphalism. But rather, something we have not tried before – love offered in humility and grief.

What Do “We” Acknowledge in Our Lament?

There are truly noble and inspiring aspects of the history of all of our nations. But when we know only the sanitized version of our histories and build our identities upon that incomplete story, we are left with an inadequate and fractured vision of the past as a foundation for the actions of the present. (Here, I move to the first person singular, and pray that you will add what fits your life, faith, and experience.)

Thus, tonight, I acknowledge and witness to my own suffering and sins and to those of my ancestors. I acknowledge and witness to your suffering, my sisters and brothers, and that of your ancestors. I acknowledge my own ignorance of much suffering and sin and the shame/grief/ shock that comes with finding out, for the first time, what happened. I acknowledge and lament the injustice, violence, cruelty, and greed that mar the history of my people:

the evil done to us and to our ancestors, to our brothers and sisters,
the evil done on our behalf,
the evil of things left undone, of failing to pay attention to history
and what was and is actually going on with other people around us

I acknowledge with deep grief the way in which I believed what I was taught by my elders, that our nation came to be by entirely honorable means. Yet, when I look more deeply into the history and become aware of what actually happened in the name of Jesus, I am overwhelmed by strong emotions of:

stunned silence
denial
outrage
anger
guilt
grief
compassion
confusion
passion
love

I acknowledge that I did not know.

Comparing Grief and Guilt

One of the things we have not tried before in efforts to respond to the legacy of colonialism is an appeal to grief, rather than to guilt. Grief, rather than guilt! “I am very, very sad,” rather than “I am guilty.” We know the guilt move well, but grief as a constructive, strong emotion is something else. When we are moved to “do something,” responding to injustice moved primarily by guilt, our motives usually have more to do with our own status, salvation, and conscience than with the well being of those who are harmed by our sin. Guilt is usually about me; it is not about the ones I/we harm.

If guilt somehow manages to keep moving, to mature and go deeply into the soul, becoming something much more, it may lead to a transformation. But lament works in another way. Lament is a small form of death and resurrection. It does more than cleansing. Rather, lament may transform by opening our eyes, ears, hands, hearts, and minds to each other, to God, and to ourselves – so that we see what we did not see. With that opening, we do not see in the same way; we are not the same persons we were before. When we allow ourselves to come together for this challenging purpose of lamenting the Doctrine of Discovery, there is a possibility for New Life. A possibility for the planting and growing of seeds of compassion, wisdom, collaboration, and even a new kind of love.

Perspective From All Directions

We sit together tonight in this Sacred Circle, looking at each other – all God’s people from many tribes and nations, all God’s people, all made in the image of the Creator. We see and feel and hear and think very different things, depending on where we come from, who our ancestors are, what we bring with us, and where we are in our lives. We come here this night to cry out to God, to hear and witness each other’s cries, and then to go from here changed by what we hear, acting from that transformation. We offer this lament so that we may rejoice together one day.

The qualities associated with the Doctrine of Discovery – arrogance, ignorance, short-sightedness, dishonesty, privilege, deception, blindness, and failure in human relationships on the part of the invader/settlers – demonstrate that this horrific past was an abuse of the Good News of Jesus Christ, unrecognized as such at the time. Today, we have the opportunity to be moved by grief and compassion so that we do not continue the injustice and oppression, and so that we may find new ways to be God’s people, all of us, listening, honoring, and working together for the reign of God here and now.

Here, we take the risk of telling and hearing the truth, trusting that truth to each other, and to God. We allow ourselves to come apart, to open up the various pieces: of hope, rage, fear, puzzlement, denial, wondering, longing, love. In this lament, we take things apart so that God can weave us back together again. Amen.

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