Summer Rites Highlight Indian Ministry
Episcopal News Service. August 6, 1987 [87160]
NEW YORK (DPS, Aug. 6) -- The Most Rev. Edmond L. Browning stood in the center of a great circle of American Indians in the twilight of the longest day of the year on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, and in solemn ritual -- as old as time among the peoples of the plains -- the Presiding Bishop was honored in a name-giving ceremony. The Rev. Clyde Estes of the Crow Creek Sioux Reservation proclaimed the name of the 24th primate of the Episcopal Church to be "Inyan Wichasa": ("Man of Rock.")
This high point was but one of many in Episcopal Indian events in June.
Each weekend of the month found Native American Episcopalians assembled in convocation -- in the Yukon River valley of Alaska, in the highland desert of the Navajo Reservation in the Southwest, in the sweeping plains of South Dakota reservation country and, paradoxically, at the first cathedral of the American Church, Faribault, Minn. Combined attendance at the four surpassed 3,000. These summer gatherings among Episcopal Native Americans are not unlike the traditional summertime assemblies of tribal bands, which annually came together along the banks of rivers and brooks for visiting, feasting and ceremonials.
The Presiding Bishop participated in two of this summer's convocations: the tri-diocesan convocation of Minnesota, North Dakota and Eau Claire at Faribault; and the progenitor of all Episcopal Indian convocations, the 115th Niobrara Convocation in the Diocese of South Dakota.
The series began with the Alaska Interior Deanery gathering at the old town of Fort Yukon, located eight miles north of the Arctic Circle on the great Yukon River. It was here at Fort Yukon, established as an outpost of Hudson's Bay Company, that the Gospel and the rites and doctrines of the Church of England first came to the Athabascan peoples.
The summer of 1987 marked the centennial of Episcopal mission among Alaskan Natives, which began at Anvik. Today one out of every two Episcopal communicants in the gigantic Diocese of Alaska is either Indian or Eskimo. There are 28 predominantly Alaska Native congregations scattered along the Yukon River and its tributaries in the deanery and along the northern coastal region from Nome to Barrow in the Arctic deanery. Many of the 1,800 Alaskan Native communicants also worship in 20 mixed congregations from Anchorage southward.
The 1987 meeting was held at St. Stephen's Mission, which formerly administered the Hudson Stuck Memorial Hospital, an Episcopal medical center to which patients were brought by dog team for treatment. While there are few dog teams now, travel still poses a formidable problem, and primary linkage is by the diocesan plane piloted by the Rev. Andy Fairfield.
Native Alaskan concerns basically mirror those of Native Americans of the "lower 48" -- leadership development through training and education for clergy and laity, compensation for clergy and lay leaders, local control of church property (land, buildings and income), unmet needs for alcohol and drug abuse programs, youth leadership programs and ministry development.
In his address, the bishop, the Rt. Rev. George Harris, stressed that he had agreed to commit ten years to this post and that he is in his seventh year of the commitment. He challenged the gathering to keep this timetable in mind in preparation for new leadership and direction.
Among "lower 48" guests at the meeting were Tolly Estes, a young Lower Brule Sioux from Fort Thompson, S.Dak., who was the official National Committee on Indian Work representative; the Rev. Susan Eastman of Oregon, who represented the Province VIII Indian Commission; and Carol Hampton, Native American Field Officer.
The second weekend of June brought to the fore a new Navajo postulant for Holy Orders, Buddy Arthur of Farmington, N.Mex. and an unanimously adopted resolution addressing structure and status of the Navajoland Area Mission, now unique in Episcopal Church framework. The proposal, presented by Bishop Wes Frensdorff, has been drafted over the past year by the Council of the Episcopal Church in Navajoland. The proposal, which takes into account Frensdorff's previously announced intent to resign his part-time episcopate following 1988's General Convention, has been forwarded to the Commission on Structure, the Presiding Bishop and the Executive Council.
The 12th annual Convocation was held a stone's throw outside the boundaries of the 25,000-square mile Navajo Reservation at the outskirts of Farmington, in the old Episcopal complex which once housed the only hospital or medical facility for the Navajo people within the entire eastern sweep of the reservation. The old hospital now houses the offices of the Episcopal Church in Navajoland, and All Saints' Church, decorated with hand-woven Navajo rugs, colorful banners and altar hanging and a rustic stylized crucifix, which was crafted by Victoria John, a communicant of All Saints'.
The convocation, which throughout provided bi-lingual translation, opened with renewal of baptismal vows, hymns in Navajo and English languages, Holy Eucharist and healing services. Frensdorff was assisted by the Presiding Elder (Adah Sedahi), Fr. Steven Plummer, as well as by Navajo deacon Yazzie Mason and postulant Arthur.
Vital and consequential business meetings were chaired by the Presiding Elder; many reports reflecting growth and progress were presented by laity from the three regions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah which comprise the area mission; 18 Navajos were awarded certificates of commendation for Education for Mission study. It was reported that during the past year, the area mission has held four workshops on ministry development and several spiritual growth conferences and that a dozen Navajo men and women would be attending a two-week mid-summer course conducted on the reservation by professors from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary.
Most impressive, however, was the quantity and quality of growing youth work in the Episcopal Church in Navajoland. Twenty-eight young people, some in their late teens, met separately to organize their first youth council. Arthur, youth director, was assisted by Fr. Kerry C. Neuhardt of the Diocese of Arizona and two youth directors from his parish. Curtis Yazza, a substance abuse counselor for a tribal program at Window Rock and communicant of Good Shepherd at Fort Defiance, presented a workshop on alcohol and drug abuse.
Plummer and Delphine Mason were elected deputies to General Convention, where Episcopal Church in Navajoland has voice but no vote -- and were also named as delegates to Province VIII Synod. Elected alternates for General Convention were the Rev. Jack Fowler and Pauline Dick, with Fowler and Lorraine Nelson named as alternates for Synod.
Introduced as "our Choctaw grandmother," Owanah Anderson, national Indian ministries staff officer, was asked to share final reflections on the 12th annual Convocation. She commended the Episcopal Church in Navajoland's spiritual growth and expanding programmatic goals but cautioned the Area Mission to be prepared to exercise patience as it seeks General Convention endorsement for structuring; to which Plummer responded: "We have patience; we are Navajo, the people who survived the 'long walk.'"
Social highlights of the Convocation, attended by 300, included a munificent banquet with a profusion of wild flowers -- gathered and arranged by John -- as table decoration. Hampton was banquet speaker. Convocation guests, including Blanche Zembower of Denver, official NCIW representative, were presented handcrafted gifts. The desert dusk brought the quick-quick steps of the old Navajo dances to the drum beat and singing of Paul Mason.
More than 2,100 were present for the meal which followed the final Eucharist at the 115th Niobrara Convocation, held deep in the Rosebud Reservation at the village of Mission, home of the now closed historic school for Indian boys founded more than a century ago by the Rt. Rev. William Hobart Hare, bishop of Niobrara. The bishop of the non-geographic missionary diocese of Niobrara had oversight of the great Sioux Nation and, during his long years of service, extending from 1873 until 1909, Hare confirmed 10,000 Lakota-Dakota Indians in the Episcopal Church.
Indians of many tribes, though predominantly Lakota-Dakota (Sioux), plus non-Indian clergy and laity, began to arrive on June 18, to register at the beautiful old St. James Chapel erected in 1884 as Ephphatha Chapel and located at the edge of the Bishop Hare school complex. Most of the participants came prepared to camp, as had been the custom of olden times, when 500 tepees had dotted the prairie in Niobrara Convocations of past generations. In 1987, only one tepee was erected; it was the white tepee by custom raised in tribute to the bishop.
During the next three days, three persons were baptized, 85 confirmed two received, 77 commissioned as lay ministers, one couple married and an Oglala Sioux was ordained to the priesthood. Three bishops, including the Presiding Bishop; the Rt. Rev. Harold Jones, first Native American elevated to the episcopate; and the Rt. Rev. Craig Anderson, diocesan bishop; along with 119 clergy from 15 dioceses -- were present for the laying on of hands when Charles Montileaux, recently returned to the diocese from study at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, was ordained to the priesthood.
During the course of the gathering, a national coalition of Native American clergy was organized, with the Rev. Webster Two Hawk (Rosebud Sioux) designated as chairman. The Covenant of Oklahoma II, issued at a major consultation on Indian ministry last autumn, called for the organization of a clergy network of Indians and non-Indians who minister among Native Americans.
The 86-year-old Vine Deloria, Sr., archdeacon of Niobrara deanery from 1960-68, journeyed from his retirement home in Arizona and immediately was center of a circle of listeners to his enchanting stories. Dr. Ben Reifel, former U.S. Congressman, traveled from Florida to visit with old friends and former constituents. Dr. Helen Peterson of Portland, Ore., returned to her origins as head of the Episcopal Church's National Committee on Indian Work, which convened a business meeting and welcomed two newly appointed members -- Ginny Doctor (Onondaga) of Syracuse, N.Y., and Cecelia Kitto-Wilch, M.D., (Santee Sioux) who is president of ECW for the Niobrara Deanery.
The Convocation passed two near-unanimous resolutions in support of bills pending in the United States Congress -- S.705, the Sioux Nation Black Hills Act, which calls for return of federal lands unlawfully taken from Sioux tribes in 1877; and S.129, the re-authorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. Hundreds of signatures were affixed to petitions calling for enactment of these pieces of federal legislation.
The Presiding Bishop called the convocation to reconciliation and harmony in his sermon on Sunday morning. This final service was opened by a procession of hundreds, many walking behind banners of the 86 Indian congregations of the diocese. The Primate spoke of his own ministry as one of servanthood, as he seeks to understand the special concerns and special visions of all the People of God and his whole Creation.
Browning sat quietly, unattended, on a wooden plank propped by concrete blocks beneath a brush arbor throughout most of an afternoon and listened to concerns of the people of the grass-roots; he personally carried Communion to a hospitalized elder, and he visited the domestic violence shelter operated in one of the buildings of Bishop Hare School by White Buffalo Calf Women's Society; he observed a cross-section of reservation life dispirited by neglect; he linked arms to dance the honoring dance during the name-giving ceremony. The Primate stood in the center of the great circle in the Dakota twilight to accept the many handcrafted gifts, which included eight star-quilts, a beaded stole and a chief's head-dress with full-length trail. The latter perfectly matched the beaded moccasins which were presented to the Presiding Bishop at his installation by the Rev. Noah Brokenleg, senior priest of the Rosebud Mission.
In contrast to the brush arbor in South Dakota, the great Eucharist and ordination in Minnesota was held in a Cathedral. Other events of the convocation, during the last weekend of June, took place on the green, circled by gothic towers of the old and historic Shattuck boarding school.
Episcopal Indians of North Dakota, Wisconsin and Minnesota journeyed great distances to Faribault to participate in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the establishment of the Cathedral of our Merciful Savior, founded in 1862 by Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple, known in his time as "Apostle to the Indians." This man, the first bishop of Minnesota, stormed Congress, White House and Episcopal General Conventions as advocate of Indians, and, in fact, it was Whipple who whipped the Protestant Episcopal Church into a social consciousness in regard to Indian affairs.
As in South Dakota, the theme of the Minnesota Convocation was one of reconciliation. Here, among green lawns and towering trees, the message of reconciliation between two races of people was subtle and implied. Not only was it the anniversary of the cathedral founding but also the 125th anniversary of the tragic 1862 "Minnesota Uprising," during the Santee Sioux broke out of the narrow confines of their Minnesota Valley reservation in a last uprising against long years of government treachery and deceit. In the end, 700 white settlers were dead.
After trials, lasting about five minutes each, death sentences were pronounced upon 306 Indians. It was through intervention of Whipple directly with President Lincoln sentences were commuted for all but 38, who were hanged at Mankata on the day after Christmas, 1862. The Santee Sioux, among whom the Episcopal Church had begun mission in 1859, were expelled from Minnesota and sent by overcrowded boat to Dakota Territory. The Episcopal Church accompanied the Santee.
Such was the backdrop as some 650 Minnesota Episcopalians -- Indian and white -- worshipped together at the ordination to the diaconate of Johnson Loud, Jr. (Ojibwa), and priesting of Ivan Sutherland, a non-Indian whose 43 years as a lay reader have been centered at the Rice Lake Chippewa Reservation in northern Minnesota.
Some 40 adults from Red Lake Chippewa Reservation traveled the 300 miles to attend ordination services for Loud, a former school teacher in Wisconsin who returned to his home reservation in northern Minnesota and began study for ordination under Canon XI. An accomplished artist, Loud's pottery has been widely exhibited, and his murals decorate a school building and tribal government offices of the Red Lake Band.
As a symbol of his spiritual leadership, a pipe was presented to the Presiding Bishop by Fr. Virgil Foote, who also gifted diocesan bishop, the Rt. Rev. Robert Anderson, and his wife with pipes. Star quilts, baskets and wild rice were presented to other distinguished participants of the convocation, which included the Rt. Rev. Harold Hopkins Jr., bishop of North Dakota, and the Rt. Rev. William Wantland, bishop of Eau Claire.
The North Dakota Committee on Indian Work will host the 1988 tri-diocesan convocation at Fort Berthold, where Episcopal mission began in the last year of the 19th century. It was then that a group of 20 Standing Rock Sioux Episcopalians set out far up the Missouri River on a preaching mission to the Arikara people, one of several instances of Indians evangelizing Indians.
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