The Everlasting People by Matthew J. Milliner

Author:Matthew J. Milliner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Chesterton;G. K. Chesterton;GK Chesterton;G K Chesterton;Wade Center;Wheaton College;Hansen Lectures;Hansen Lectureship Series;HLS;Native America;Native American;First Nations;art history;Turtle Island;Native Americans in Midwest;The Everlasting Man;G. K. Chesterton poetry;G K Chesterton poem;Christian art history;G K Chesterton and native American art;indigenous;indigenous art history;G K Chesterton indigenous art;first nations art;first nations history;G K Chesterton first nations art
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2021-09-22T11:48:28+00:00

Figure 3.4. Norval Morrisseau with Our Lady of Perpetual Help, still from the documentary The Paradox of Norval Morrisseau (1974)

We took all nations captive that we might set them free. . . .

Lo, we have freed all peoples. Oh, set us free!57

THE CONGREGATION OF THE GREAT SPIRIT

It would be very easy to make a case for Our Lady of Perpetual Help as a key candidate for Our Lady of Chicago, an image that reminds Indigenous and settler alike of the city’s history of conquest. I have counted no less than twelve churches in the city or around it either dedicated to this Madonna or with large shrines within them honoring her image, in addition to the one above the Saint Kateri Center of Chicago at Saint Benedict Parish.58 But as mentioned in the last chapter, much of the urban Native community has been gentrified out of Chicago. In Milwaukee, however, because of the peacemaking initiative of Josette Juneau (of Menominee and French descent), the city avoided a Fort Dearborn disaster.59 The Indigenous Christian community is therefore especially vibrant, in particular at the Congregation of the Great Spirit, founded in 1989, where the Medicine Wheel dominates the choir, and statues of Mary and Jesus are lovingly bedecked in Indigenous regalia. Nearby one can visit the Milwaukee Public Museum to see disconcerting dioramas of mechanized Indian mannequins alongside Christian Indigenous artifacts stowed safely behind glass with dismissive labels.60 But the Congregation of the Great Spirit will introduce visitors to actual Indigenous life, not its hollow museum memorial; and they won’t even charge admission.

On the morning of my visit with students in early 2020, there were so many people in the church that our group had to disperse into the few remaining seats. Visiting Catholic seminarians from Asia gave the gathering an additional international appeal, but the Indigenous community was unmistakably the host. I had been searching for a convergence on this continent, wondering if a connection could be made between the sacred heart of Jesus, whose iconography pervades the Midwest, and the sacred drumbeat of the pow-wow drum, “the heartbeat of the people.”61 The fact that Moravian Protestant missionaries used graphic images of the heart to convey their message, and that Catholic missionaries did as well, seemed to make this convergence inevitable.62 At the Congregation of the Great Spirit I witnessed the confluence I was hoping for, and had seen only fleetingly elsewhere, at last.

During the service we smudged and sang and lamented and prayed in a sanctuary thick with the smell of cedar and sage. We participated in a rhythmically choreographed, highly energized corporate prayer in the Four Directions.63 We were then invited up to the sanctuary for a final drum song. All of us pressed into the tiny choir, where the drum, pummeled with startling force, enveloped us. The compressed space meant that one had no choice but to participate. An Indigenous man was holding an infant next to me, and I expected at any moment for the child to be startled awake by the pounding drum and its accompanying song of praise.

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