Indian Committee Launches New Work
Episcopal News Service. January 24, 1980 [80023]
NEW YORK -- Determined to broaden both the scope and the understanding of Indian ministries, the Episcopal Church's National Committee on Indian Work began the decade with new work in three dioceses and an ambitious plan for a national survey.
The Committee's first meeting of the new decade was held in Phoenix, Ariz., Jan. 11-13. The Committee opened new work in the Dioceses of Massachusetts, Connecticut and the Central Gulf Coast and devised a three-year strategy that calls for a massive statistical and attitude study of Native American people.
The new work represents a major commitment to expand the Episcopal Church ministry to Indian communities in the east, said Steve Charleston, Indian Ministries Staff Officer at the Episcopal Church Center, and also represents a form of partnership that the Committee hopes to begin to use widely.
Charleston explained that a parish in Dothan, Ala., Church of the Nativity, had contacted the Church Center about contributing to Indian work. "We were able to point them to Trinity Parish and St. Ann's Mission right in their own diocese in Atmore and the result is that those congregations are at work on a training center for the Creek nation to develop sewing, craft and media skills."
The other two new programs link diocesan structures: in Connecticut with the burgeoning community of Pequot Indians; and in Massachusetts with the active Boston Indian Council. The Pequot community is seeking tribal status and developing self-help projects. It was helped in the past by the Episcopal Church-founded Indian Rights Association.
Charleston and the Committee members hope that these kinds of partnerships will be one product of a survey designed to produce a common frame of reference for Indian ministries throughout the country.
The survey will take place on four levels. It will examine diocesan structures in places where there is Indian work for strengths, weaknesses and the relationships that have developed. Secondly, it will survey Indian clergy about their attitudes on the ministry. Thirdly, it will survey the laity about issues of stewardship, their understanding of their own ministries and their relationships to the parish, diocesan and national structures. An examination of education from both the student and institutional points of view will complete the survey.
Members of the Committee are developing the survey instruments by consulting widely throughout the Indian community. "We want to make this as much as possible an Indian-to-Indian survey," said Charleston. "We want to know the kinds of questions Indians want asked and want answers to."
When the instruments are developed, the dioceses, institutions, students and clergy will be surveyed by mail. The survey of the laity will be done in person at the large convocations that take place in the spring and summer. "Again, it will be people-to-people. We will be able to get a wide cross section and we will have translation facilities right on the spot so there can be no misunderstanding," Charleston said.
They hope to have the information gathered by September and, by Jan. 1, 1981, have a working document available throughout the Church.
In other action, the Committee re-elected Owanah Anderson of Wichita Falls, Tex., to chair the group and chose Helen Peterson of Portland, Ore., as vice-chairman and the Rev. William Wantland to represent the Committee on the Coalition for Human Needs.
Three new members of the Committee were seated: Jocelyn Ninham of Oneida, Wisc., Marie Varilik of Fort Washakie, Wyo., and Marcella Martinez of Farmington, N. Mex. Ninham is a member of the Oneida nation and Varilik of the Shoshone, marking the first time these nations have been represented on the Committee.
Other members of the Committee are: Norman Nauska, New Brighton, Minn.; the Rev. Paul Buckwalter, Old Town, Maine; Belle Beaven, Riverside, Calif.; the Rev. Innocent Goodhouse, Fort Yates, N. D.; Bessie Titus, Fairbanks, Alaska; the Rev. William Elrod, Tempe, Ariz.; the Rt. Rev. Walter Jones, Sioux Falls, S.D.; Vivian Winter Chaser, Oglala, S. D.; and the Rt. Rev. Frederick W. Putnam, Farmington, N. Mex.