wfn.org | [ENS] Drumbeats and Song Greet New Native American Missioner

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Daybook, from Episcopal News Service

November 29, 2004 -- Monday Mission: Ministry and Outreach

Drumbeats and song greet new Native American missioner

By Jan Nunley

[ENS] To the ancient pulse of the drum -- for Native Americans a sign of the
heartbeat at the center of God's creation -- Janine Tinsley-Roe, a member of
the Shinnecock and Poospatuck Tribes of Long Island, was officially
installed as Native American Missioner for the Episcopal Church on November
22 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.

The celebration of the Eucharist and institution ceremony featured
participants from across North America's "Indian Country," representing
Native Hawaiians, the Athabascan peoples of Alaska, the Navajo and Pascua
Yaqui of the Southwest, and the Seneca Nation of the Haudenosaunee
(Iroquois) in New York. Southern Virginia Bishop Suffragan Carol Gallagher,
an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, and Frank Oberly, Comanche/Osage,
co-chairs of the Episcopal Council on Indigenous Ministries, presented
Tinsley-Roe for installation.

In his sermon, Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold recounted his first
experience of Native American ministry as a teenager at a work camp
sponsored by the Episcopal Church at St. Andrew's, a parish of the Cheyenne
River Episcopal Mission on the Cheyenne River Reservation in Wyoming. "When
I returned home, my mother said, 'you've changed,'" Griswold said. Among the
Mnicoujou, Itazipco, Sihasapa, and Oohenumpa Lakota at Cheyenne River, he
said, he learned to count not simply "clock time" but "right time" -- the
moment when the people come together. "Looking at the clock, we often miss
the encounter" with God and with others. He also learned from the Lakota the
value of kinship and the idea that "nothing is ultimately ours; everything
is gift."

"Dominant societies think they hold the full truth," Griswold said, but the
true path to the restoration of unity lies in "traveling the 'Red Road' to
wholeness and balance, into the boundless, healing love of Christ." Within
some Native cultures, "walking the Red Road" is a metaphor for living in
harmony with the Creator's intention.

The newest of the four missioners at the Church Center, Tinsley-Roe was
welcomed by her fellow missioners in the Office of Ethnic Congregational
Development. She began her work at the Episcopal Church Center on June 17,
2004.

Tinsley-Roe is a founder of the Shinnecock-Sewanaka Society, a grassroots
community development organization based in Bellport, Long Island, which
advocates for the rights of members of the Shinnecock tribe living off the
reservation. For several years she served as its executive director.

On display during the service was a portion of the lace altar linens made by
the women of the Sybil Carter Indian Mission and Lace Industry Association
and donated to the Cathedral by Amy Townsend in 1911 when the Choir and the
Memorial Chapels of St. Saviour and St. Columba were consecrated.

--The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of Episcopal News Service.