Native Episcopal Church of North America Launched at Oklahoma Meeting
Episcopal News Service. February 8, 1996 [96-1380]
Owanah Anderson, The Episcopal Church's Staff Officer for Indian ministries
(ENS) Eagles are fairly rare in central Oklahoma. So, on a cold afternoon in late January when three eagles were sighted circling low over the rolling grounds of St. Crispin's Conference Center, 50 Native Americans duly took note.
Episcopal Native peoples from 17 United States and three Canadian dioceses gathered for Winter Talk VIII with the stated purpose of "healing our hurts and building the foundation for the 21st millennium," according to Ginny Doctor, an Onondaga from New York who is a missionary in Alaska. They left with a vision and a sketch for a whole new church.
They named their creation the Native Episcopal Church of North America. Charter members wore four red beads strung on a red ribbon and pinned to their lapels.
"We do not leave our own dioceses or the Episcopal Church," stressed the Rev. Martin Brokenleg, a Rosebud Sioux from South Dakota who was a facilitator for the event. "What we are doing is deliberately taking a bold step toward shouldering responsibilities for our own vision of ministry."
"It's like taking the first step from being in a cocoon," said Winona Hawley, an Inupiaq from the Arctic Coast village of Kivalina where her husband is a non-stipendiary Episcopal priest.
The new church is first fruit of a statement drafted and ratified by Winter Talk participants a year ago. The 1995 "Statement of Self-Determination" asserted native peoples' intent to "affirm our rightful place within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion... and to incorporate spiritual traditions and customs of our many peoples as we celebrate the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
Frank Oberly (Osage/Comanche), chair of Episcopal Council of Indian Ministries (ECIM), quickly appointed a 15-member ad hoc task force to shape the structure of the new Native Episcopal Church. The Re-Visioning Task Force, which includes the five members of ECIM plus 10 other Native leaders, will meet in Denver, May 25.
"Native people have an explicit understanding of dual citizenship," said Oberly. "We have been citizens of our own tribes as well as citizens of the U.S. for generations." He continued, "We can handle dual affiliations in the church. In the months ahead, we must counsel with each other on how to design a framework to best respond to our singular needs."
The eagle sighting occurred during a much-needed break in a strenuous agenda of the five-day annual gathering. The tempo had been intense with participants from 18 tribes and nations of the U.S. and from three Canadian reserves zealously dealing with wide-ranging topics linked to a theme of "Dreams for the Future -- Remembering our Past and Honoring the 7th Generation."
On the first day, Sheryl Kujawa, youth ministries officer from the Episcopal Church Center, conducted a six-hour training session on child sexual abuse.
"In the next two crisp and gray days, we worked long hours on corporate and personal healing of mind and spirit," said Doctor. "Then sun came out, and we rushed outside for fresh air. There above us in the northern sky were three eagles."
"Eagles are considered messengers among my people," said an Ojibwa. "They're always a good omen," said a Lakota.
The First Nations peoples of the Anglican Church of Canada have made monumental strides in the past four years toward self determination and full partnership. In three years' time, indigenous Canadian Anglicans have driven a self-determining covenant through their national executive council, their general synod and back to the powerful Council of the North, comprised of bishops of the northern dioceses whose constituencies are largely indigenous peoples. A goal is to build a true Anglican Indigenous Church in Canada with an indigenous bishop with episcopal oversight.
Five indigenous Canadian Anglicans journeyed to Oklahoma to assist in transforming the 1995 Winter Talk Declaration of Self-Determination "from the concept to the concrete," led by Gordon Beardy, suffragan bishop of Keewatin and the first of his Cree tribe to become a bishop.
In addressing Winter Talk participants, Beardy quoted the familiar Old Testament prophecy: "I will pour out my spirit on everyone; your sons and daughters will proclaim my messages; your old men will dream dreams and your young men will see visions."
At the opening Eucharist, the Rev. Doyle Turner, an Ojibwa from northern Minnesota, challenged participants that the week they would spend together was a week for powerful dreams, "dreams to waken a sleeping giant."
The time had come, "to bring those dreams out, dreams of the future of our people," he said. "We came here, where we are, because of the vision we have held before us this far. We came to where we are in preparation to go even further."
On the final afternoon of the gathering, Brokenleg, reading the 1995 "Statement of Self-Determination," invited participants to join him in signing up as charter members of the new Native Episcopal Church of North America.
One by one they came forward, some silently to sign, some to speak with heart-felt emotion. In all, 40 Episcopalians affixed their names as charter members; the five Canadians opted to counsel with constituency prior to commitment. Each who signed was handed a strand of four red beads to pin on the lapel.
"I don't know what the future is; I don't know where we will go. But this is the start," Brokenleg said.