Remembering Jamestown: Hard Questions About Christian Mission by

Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781621899341
Publisher: Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
Published: 2013-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Re-Engaging the Christian Mission to Native America

5

Living in Transition, Embracing Community, and Envisioning God’s Mission as Trinitarian Mutuality

Reflections from a Native-American Follower of Jesus

RICHARD TWISS

Christian mission among the tribes of North America has not been very good news. What worldview influences allowed the Creator’s story of creation and redemption to morph into a hegemonic colonial myth justifying the genocide and exploitation of America’s First Nations people? What can be done to deconstruct that myth and move its focus away from a Euro-centric core? We will explore perspectives from North American Indigenous theologians and their experiences as participants within that story that might help reorient it to a biblical narrative that pursues a redemptive community in/through diversity.

INTRODUCTION

THE MORE I READ about the period of missionary history surrounding the Jamestown era I became as disillusioned and skeptical as ever about Christianity and missionary endeavors among our First Nations people.

It was a defining moment in my journey as a Lakota follower of Jesus when Jerry Yellowhawk prayed over me in a Lakota naming ceremony, giving me the name Taoyate Obnajin “He Stands With His People,” and Vincent Yellow Old Woman gifted me with his eagle feather war bonnet to confirm the name and Creator’s gifting in my life.

My father is Oglala Lakota/Sioux from the Pine Ridge Reservation and my mother is Sicangu Lakota/Sioux from the Rosebud Reservation, both in South Dakota. I was born and lived among my mother’s people until age 6, when we moved away from the reservation. I grew up in a small town in Oregon from grades 3–12 then moved back to Rosebud to attend Sinte Gleska University.

In 1972, along with 600 others, I participated in the American Indian Movement’s (AIM) forced takeover and occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office Building in Washington, DC, protesting the U.S. Federal Government’s breaking of more than 700 congressionally ratified treaties that it made with tribes in the United States. During this period of my life I began to allow hatred toward white people and Christianity to grow in my heart. In 1974, however, after years of many painful experiences with drug and alcohol abuse, time in jail and a growing despair of my own lostness, I became a follower of Jesus while living in Maui, Hawaii. I had to learn to love white people and become a Christian then.

As the years passed I began to resist the pressure to accept interpretations of the Bible that said “old things had passed away and all things had become white” regarding my following Jesus in the context of my Native cultural ways, music, dance, drumming, ceremony and culture. In reference to my Native culture I was informed the Bible said “touch not the unclean thing,” or “come out from among them and be separate,” or “what fellowship does light have with darkness.” This meant I needed to leave my Indian ways behind me, because I had a new identity in Christ, and it WAS NOT Indian! The Bible was used to demonize just about everything important to our cultural sense of being one with God and creation.

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