wfn.org | Native Americans to Welcome WCRC Delegates with Pow Wow

["Daphne Martin_Gnanadason" <Daphne.Martin_Gnanadason@warc.ch>]

Uniting General Council 2010                                    

>News Release 
>21 June 2010

Native Americans to Welcome WCRC Delegates with Pow Wow
Chris Meehan, UGC News Editor
Early on, it seemed that the Native American presence at the
Uniting General Council would be minimal, perhaps limited to
having Native Americans make statements and offer gifts of
welcome to delegates who have come from all over the world to
Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the upper Midwest of the United
States, to form the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC).
But on Tuesday, June 22, a range of events will occur that will
reflect a different story.
Levi Rickert, one of the organizers of events focusing on Native
Americans and issues related to Indigenous Peoples, says he is
very grateful for the change in emphasis. Initially, he thought
that the committee he was helping to serve would play a minimal
part of the gathering that brought together the World Alliance of
Reformed Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council to create
the WCRC.
But as it has turned out, a bright spotlight has been placed on
Aboriginal Peoples from all countries, with an emphasis on those
groups that are from the United States and Canada. Native
Americans are, in fact, taking “front stage at the global
gathering of churches,” whose theme relates to joining all people
under God in the, as the theme states: “Unity of Spirit in the
Bond of Peace.”
“The overture to place emphasis on Indigenous Peoples has been
surprising, but it is very grand,” said Rickert, a member of the
Potawatomi tribe and former director of a Native American center
in Grand Rapids. “I find this focus enriching personally. It
gives Native Americans in the United States a chance to showcase
for the world who we are.”
A major public showcase takes place on Tuesday with a keynote
address to delegates in the Van Noord Arena on the campus of
Calvin College by Richard Twist, a member of the Rosebud Lakota
Sioux tribe and an educator on Native American issues. His speech
will be followed by a pow wow and other events reflecting unity
in a park along the Grand River in downtown Grand Rapids. 
“There are a lot of important aspects to the pow wow. We will be
having a welcome ceremony in the same place that we welcomed one
another in the past,” said Mike Peters, a pastor, member of the
Ottawa tribe in Michigan and one of the coordinators of the
event. Ah-Nab-Awen Park, the site of the pow wow, is where many
tribes used to meet and trade items with one another every year
during the warm months, said Peters.
“We will have an exchange of drums and a Reformed worship
service,” said Peters, who is holding talking circles every night
outside the Van Noord Arena at which people can sit in a circle
and talk about spiritual matters. He also is blessing spaces used
for meetings with smoke from sweet grass.
As for the event on Tuesday, Peters said, “We will be gathering
in peace and unity and celebrate this new organization, which we
hope will help to affect true healing for the Native Americans of
this nation.”
Workshops are also addressing issues related to issues facing
Indigenous Peoples. First, there is one that discusses how the
WCRC can work with Aboriginal People as well as ones that address
the topic of how native culture was almost destroyed in the
United States and Canada by Indian boarding schools.  Young
people from many tribes were sent to these schools in order to
wipe out their language and culture so that they could more adapt
smoothly into the United States and Canadian societies.
At one such workshop on Tuesday, James Scott, a pastor in the
United Church of Canada, said that Canada has worked hard to
bring healing and reconciliation between Aboriginal Peoples and
others in Canada. But there is still much work to do.
The journey began in the mid 1990s when Aboriginal Peoples began
to bring lawsuits against Indian boarding schools. Some suits
involved the issue of forcing children away from their families
and removing native culture from them, but others dealt with
sexual and physical abuse that occurred at these schools.
Initially, the churches, who ran the schools, and the
government, that set policy for the schools, pointed at one
another, blaming each other for the problems. Eventually,
Canadian courts determined that financial reparation s were in
order, with the government paying 75 percent of the cost and the
churches 25 percent.
After that, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was
established, at which Aboriginal Peoples can testify about their
experiences in the schools, said Scott.
The United States is several years behind in the process of
making amends and reparations with Native Americans, whose land
was taken by immigrants, mostly from northern Europe, who came to
the United States with “a gun in one hand and a Bible in the
other,” said Rickert. 
The Uniting General Council 2010 in Grand Rapids, United States
(June 18-28) marks the merger of the World Alliance of Reformed
Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council to form the World
Communion of Reformed Churches. 

Contact: Kristine Greenaway

UGC News Room – Calvin College - Hoogenboom Center Room HC 204
Cell phone: 1-616-826-5540 or 1-616-826-8636: News Room:
1-616-526-7885

UGC News Room – Calvin College - Hoogenboom Center Room HC 204 
Cell phone: 1-616-826-5540 or 1-616-826-8636
email: kgr@warc.ch
web: www.reformedchurches.org (
http://www.reformedchurches.org/#_blank )