wfn.org | Native American Consultation

[owner-umethnews@ecunet.org]

"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS 97" by SUSAN PEEK on April 15, 1997 at 14:24
Eastern, about DAILY NEWS RELEASES FROM UNITED METHODIST NEWS SERVICE (30
notes).

Note 29 by UMNS on April 21, 1997 at 16:02 Eastern (8110 characters).

Produced by United Methodist News Service, official news agency of
the United Methodist Church, with offices in Nashville, Tenn., New
York, and Washington.

CONTACT: Linda Green                            217(10-34-71B){29}
         Nashville, Tenn. (615) 742-5470            April 21, 1997

Ecumenical, international consultation
addresses plight of Native Americans

                          by Robert Lear*
      OKLAHOMA CITY (UMNS)  --  Indigenous peoples "have gone
through a long cold winter" of discrimination, desecration and
deprivation, an international, ecumenical consultation on native
peoples was told April 19 here.
     "But now the winter is over, the much awaited springtime is
here, and we must rebuild," said Henrietta Mann, Missoula, Mont.,
a Cheyenne who is professor of Native American Studies at the
University of Montana.  "We are a spiritually rooted,
compassionate people ... who can forgive the unforgivable.
     "It is past time for empty words -- as empty as the words on
the (hundreds of) treaties with the government (that was)
established on our land," Mann asserted in the closing address of
the three-day event.  Native peoples, she said, were not "put on
the earth to have our ways denigrated" and "our culture, our
ceremonies and our thoughts assaulted."
     With a theme of honoring the past and building for the
future, the consultation was sponsored by the United Methodist
Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns (CCUIC)
and nine other mainline denominations, conciliar bodies and Roman
Catholic units.
     United Methodists comprised about a third of the 91 people
registered from more than a dozen Christian and traditional
groups.  In addition to those from the United States, other
participants came from Canada, Guyana and Switzerland.
      A 300-word statement released at the end of the consultation
says that "the Gospel of Jesus Christ demands" that the American
Indian Christian community "be freed from the yoke and mantle of
traditions and structures that . . . contribute to the
disintegration of our cultural heritage, communal harmony and the
God-given right to self determination . . . ."
     "We declare to all that we will no longer be invisible
participants in the church and American Society,"  the statement
asserts.  "We will no longer tolerate the colonial imposition of
European church structures and doctrine on indigenous
communities."
     The statement calls on "all people of good heart to stand
with us in confronting the systemic and institutional racism,
marginalization and fear --  and all their consequences that
compromise the integrity of our God-given spiritualities, the
authenticity of our individual . . . histories . . . preservation
of our identity, language and custom, and the possibility of our
sovereignty as indigenous nations before God and the world."
     A committee drawn from consultation participants drafted the
statement.
     Although not formally adopted, it was in harmony with the
presentations and discussions of the three days.  Accompanying the
statement were suggestions of implementing strategies.
     "Spirituality," "genocide," "sacred places," "sovereignty,"
"racism," "Eurocentric religion" were words heard frequently in
formal presentations and discussions.
     Religious structures that came to the new world were
oppressive, said the Rev. George E. Tinker, a member of the Osage
and Cherokee tribes and a professor at Iliff School of Theology,
Denver.  The very first missionaries, he continued, were "a
destructive force from the beginning," dividing native people and
"setting one faction against another. . . ."
     "The Christianity imposed on us was a European Christianity,"
Tinker asserted.  "Maybe we don't have to build a church in
English style before we can be Christian, or recite the creeds or
pray."
     Sacred sites are being desecrated and placed off limits to
native peoples, said Ola Cassadore Davis of the Apache Survival
Coalition in Arizona, Kaleo Patterson of the Justice for Kanaka
Maoli Initiatives in Hawaii, and Jean LaRose of the Amerindian
Peoples Organization in Guyana.
     Bishop Eugenio Poma, formerly head of the Methodist Church in
Bolivia and now a consultant on indigenous people for the World
Council of Churches, said that "our sacred sites are destroyed,
our language is not respected, and our spirituality is not
accepted."
     Richard A. Grounds, a Yuchi/Seminole who is professor of
anthropology at the University of Tulsa (Okla.), spoke of assaults
against individual Native Americans and tribes, saying that "at
some time every major area of the United States has been a killing
field."  A number of participants related personal stories of
discrimination, frequently accompanied  by tears.
     Language and symbols are the ways we express "what is most
sacred to ourselves," stated the Rev. Paul Ojibway, director of
the Graymoor Ecumenical and Interreligious Institute's Washington
office.  He called spirituality an essential part of native
communities.
      Carol Locust, an Eastern Band Cherokee and research
associate in the University of Arizona College of Medicine, said
that if native people can reach out to each other "we will make a
bridge to tomorrow so we can all live together.  Danaj Trudell, a
pre-law student at the University of Minnesota/Morris, said that
young people "need role models, people we can look up to."
     Sunrise worship services and tribal singing led by the Rev.
Harry Long, Muskogee, Okla., began each day of the consultation. 
The final day coincided with the second anniversary of the bombing
of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building here. The closing worship
was a memorial to the 168 people killed, including Raymond L.
Johnson, husband of Anne Marshall, an associate general secretary
of CCUIC and convener of the consultation planning committee.
                               # # #
     *Lear is a retired news director of the Washington office of
United Methodist News Service, living in Wernersville, Pa.

EDITORS: The entire statement appears below:
                                        

     On the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing at a historic
gathering of Native American Christians and Native American
practitioners we are reminded once again of the history of
violence in North America and the resulting culture of violence in
the United States.  This ecumenical and interfaith
consultation declares that we will no longer tolerate the colonial
imposition of European church structures and doctrine on
indigenous communities.
     The American Indian Christian community declares that the
Gospel of Jesus Christ demands that we, as a People, be freed from
the yoke and mantle of traditions and structures that have and
continue to contribute to the disintegration of our cultural
heritage, communal harmony and the God-given right to self
determination as children of the Creator and sisters and
brothers in Christ.
     As we journey together as the People of one Creator of all,
we declare to all that we will no longer be invisible participants
in the church and American Society.  As a People of dignity, honor
and respect, we call on all people of good heart to stand with us
in confronting the systemic and institutional racism,
marginalization and fear --  and all their consequences that
compromise the integrity of our God-given spiritualities, the
authenticity of our individual and historic histories also
included in preservation of our identity, language and custom, and
the possibility of our sovereignty as indigenous nations before
God and the world.
     In this historic meeting, the American Indian Christian and
Traditional practitioners committed themselves to a fundamental
change in interfaith and ecumenical collaboration in the life of
the churches within the national American community.  In
particular, the consultation develops positions on issues of
sacred sites, sovereignty, spirituality, and youth.
                              #  #  #
                                       

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

 To make suggestions or give your comments, send a note to 
 umns@ecunet.org or Susan_Peek@ecunet.org

 To unsubscribe, send the single word "unsubscribe" (no quotes)
 in a mail message to umethnews-request@ecunet.org

-----------------------------------------------------------------------