The Land Looks after Us by Martin Joel W.;Martin Joel W.;

Author:Martin, Joel W.;Martin, Joel W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 1999-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CATHOLIC INDIAN / INDIAN CATHOLIC

Across the continent and in many different cultures, Native men and women have melded the rites, symbols, and beliefs of Catholicism with their own ancestral ways to create something new and hybrid, a religion simultaneously Native and Christian. Juanita Little (Mescalero Apache), a Franciscan nun, reflects on her own faith journey, “I thought I was a Catholic Indian, but I’m beginning to see myself more as an Indian Catholic.” The following is from the book Native and Christian, published in 1995.

I’m Sr. Juanita of the Mescalero Apache tribe. I am enrolled in that tribe. My grandfather was captured by a band of Apaches near the Chihuahua area in Mexico when he was six years old. They brought up my father according to Apache ways. My mother is San Juan Pueblo. I really consider myself a real New Mexican. My grandmother was a Spaniard and I’m really proud of that fact because we have a little bit of all the cultures of New Mexico in our family. The Spanish, Mexican, Pueblo, and Apache. Now our younger members in the family are marrying non-Indians and when we get together, we are quite a nation. It is lovely. It is beautiful! We do have, in some instances, trouble within the marriages because those who have married the non-Indians eventually notice the cultural differences. We’ve had to cope with that as well.

My dream for myself is to build the Kingdom of God among the Apaches.

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