Episcopal News Service December 6, 2006
Bulletin insert traces Native American perspectives from colonial period
Four-part series continues in advance of Jamestown, Episcopal Church 400-year milestones; new insert available online
[ENS Focusing on Native American perspectives and the colonial period, the third of four parish bulletin inserts highlighting Episcopal Church history -- and the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Colony and the beginnings of its original parish church -- has been posted online for use Sunday, December 10, or Sunday, December 17.
The full text of the series' third insert is reprinted below.
The series began on November 26 and continues for use through December 17. The inserts may be downloaded and duplicated for insertion in parish bulletins. Available in English with translation to follow in Spanish, the first of these inserts is posted on the ENS website at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_79411_ENG_HTM.htm
The series is titled "Looking Forward, Looking Back," and its four parts are:
* Episcopalians will mark 400-year milestone in new year * Jamestown and Its Church: A Nation's First Parish * The Colonial Period: Tracing Native American Perspectives * Virginia and Its Dioceses: Uniting Indigenous and Immigrant People The bulletin inserts are a joint project of the Episcopal News Service and the Episcopal Life newspaper. The inserts will continue with a Christmastide message planned for December 24, and a sequence on ministries supporting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) beginning with the new year. The full, 10-part MDG series, designed for use from January 7 to March 11, will be posted online at one time in December.
The inserts are black-and-white and come in two formats: half of an 8.5" by 11" sheet double-sided and a full 8.5" by 11" one-sided (which will be available on Monday, November 13). The inserts are in PDF format so that may be downloaded for easy duplication and insertion into a congregation's service leaflet.
Text of newest insert:
Looking Forward, Looking Back
The Colonial Period: Tracing Native American Perspectives
'Winter Talk' will launch Episcopalians' observance of Jamestown's 400th year
'Winter is a time of great ceremony and story telling," wrote the late Vine Deloria Jr., a leader of the Native American "Renaissance" and a well known Episcopalian, who died in 2005. "Friends and relatives gathered each evening to tell about the times before living memory."
This will be the spirit as the 14th annual Winter Talk, a forum for Native American Ministries leaders in the Episcopal Church, gathers January 12-17 near Jamestown, Virginia. The event launches a series of events planned to reflect on the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown colony and its parish church - and the wider context of history that unfolded from that point. (For more on WinterTalk and the current work of Native American Ministries, led by missioner Janine Tinsley-Roe, visit http://www.episcopalchurch.org.) It is from Jamestown that the Episcopal Church also traces its origins in the Americas.
"When European explorers, adventurers and missionaries arrived in what would become the continental United States of America there were at least 300 functioning societies of native peoples, each speaking distinctively different languages and each with different cultures, histories and relationships with a Creator." Author Owanah Anderson (Choctaw) - who is now retired as the Episcopal Church's Native American Ministries officer - makes this observation in her book The Jamestown Commitment: The Episcopal Church and the American Indian (Cincinnati: Forward Movement, 1987). European colonization, she writes, then proceeded to "trigger cultural genocide for people indigenous to America."
Chief Powhatan was leader of a confederation of indigenous tribes who lived around the Chesapeake Bay at the time the English settlers first landed at what is now Virginia Beach on April 26, 1607. Early accounts of the interaction between the Native Americans and the English settlers record that Powhatan sought to relieve the initial tensions by offering food and traditional hospitality. The tribes had initially reacted to the settlers' arrival with hostility based upon previous experience with Spanish explorers, but Powhatan's people also helped the English by providing corn and instruction in planting. The marriage of Powhatan's favorite daughter, Pocahontas, to settler John Rolfe in the Jamestown Church, and her conversion to Christianity, also assisted cross-cultural relations.
But when negotiations between the settlers and indigenous people broke down, Jamestown's Captain John Smith used force to achieve his objectives. This pattern was then repeated, decade by decade, in colonies and territories as U.S. expansion pressed west, leaving painful "trails of tears" for native peoples.
The Episcopal Church, over time, has become the spiritual home of both indigenous and immigrant Americans. In this context, the Church's Executive Council designated 1997-2007 as a "Decade of Remembrance, Recognition and Reconcilation" in Episcopal parishes and dioceses. The observance has included evangelism and education initiatives serving Native Americans. Priority has also been placed upon anti-racism training, designed to eradicate the residual effects of the seeds of cultural injustice planted early on at Jamestown, where the first African American slaves were brought to American soil by Dutch explorers in 1619.
When Winter Talk convenes in January, Episcopal priest Robert Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota) is expected to present an icon he has written to honor Pocahontas. Concurrently, the gathering will seek out ways of being of support and engaged in ministry with Native Americans of all ages today, serving their needs in current contexts.
Next in this series: Virginia and Its Dioceses: Uniting Indigenous and Immigrant People
Sources, and for more information, visit:
* The National Park Service, http://www.nps.gov * The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, http://www.thediocese.net * The Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia, http://www.diosova.org * The Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov * The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, http://www.apva.org/jr.html * And for more on Jamestown, where "the nation's first representative government, free enterprise system and culturally diverse society began". . . http://www.jamestown2007.org
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