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Ecumenical Meeting on Indian Concerns

Diocesan Press Service. December 3, 1971 [96-15]

Salome Hansen, editor of The Colorado Episcopalian

(The article below was written by Mrs. Salome Hansen, editor of The Colorado Episcopalian. Mrs. Hansen attended the sessions of the conference and has prepared this feature article for the Diocesan Press. )

These are our native Americans . . . Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts.

Recent census figures show there are some 800, 000 Indian men, women and children in the United States, this country's smallest minority group.

About half of the American Indians are still on reservations, living in varying degrees of comfort, security and creativity. No matter how poor, they are nurtured deeply, in some mysterious way, by the land, however desolate it may be.

The others are for the most part first generation town and city dwellers. Cut loose from cultural ties, they are born with strange long rememberings of the soundlessness of moccasined feet. It is a memory which makes forever alien the crowded noisy streets where they must walk -- looking for work, for housing, for education, for life.

These are our native Americans.

How they relate to the Church, and how the Church may make or mend relationships with them, was the theme when Indians and Eskimos representing 28 tribes and 19 states met recently in Denver, Colo.

Sponsored by the Strategy/Screening Task Force on Indian Ministries of the Joint Strategy and Action Committee (JSAC), ten denominations were represented by members of Indian boards, panels and caucus groups.

It was a "first of its kind" meeting.

JSAC grew out of Christian concern during the social and racial turmoil of the mid- '60s. Three churches (one the Episcopal) decided that effective action in time of crisis called for ecumenicity. What they needed was an "enabling" organization -- one with a minimum of structure -- where they could share ideas, problems and jobs that needed doing.

So JSAC was born. Today, it is a coalition of the "national mission" agencies of the major Protestant denominations. One of its concerns is the Strategy/Screening Task Force on Indian Ministries, which was meeting for the first time in Denver.

The Episcopal Church was the first to organize a committee to deal specifically with Indian problems. The National Committee on Indian Work was created in 1969, with 15 members. Ten of these are Indians and Eskimos, elected by their own people, and five are bishops appointed by the Presiding Bishop from dioceses with large Indian populations.

The first year, the committee published a report, a book – This Land is Our Land.

Other churches have now developed their own individual styles of work with Indians. They met in Denver, with JSAC, the umbrella organization.

Kent FitzGerald, executive director of the Episcopal committee, was chosen chairman.

Mr. FitzGerald was born Ojibway. With both a bachelors and masters degree in Latin and Greek from Northwestern University, he turned from languages to spend most of life working with his own people.

His opening statement on Indian Self Determination set a framework around which moved the caucuses, denominational committee meetings, panels and reports which made up the three-day agenda.

Self determination is a term which implies decision -making within a group, Mr. FitzGerald pointed out. It is by nature a process difficult for the Indian. He is a good listener -- "what's the hurry"?

He will wait patiently for every opinion to be expressed. He refuses to rush the process. He doesn't want to act until there is full agreement. Everyone should be happy with a decision.

"This means that decision making by a group of Indians is a very slow process," Mr. FitzGerald explained. "The white man doesn't understand it, but it's part of the Indian culture. "

Indians lack leaders. Many of their youth now aspire to leadership roles, but where can they find models ? The great Indian leaders of the past were discarded, along with their culture, language and history in civilization's frenzy to educate these children of the land in the white man's image.

Even the Church was guilty of discouraging leadership among the native Americans it hoped to help. Indians were "given" the white man's religion, complete with Anglo-Saxon clergy and English Bible.

The change from worship of the Great Spirit to worship at the white man's altar often cost the Indian dearly in personal initiative. Tribal dances and ceremonials were often ridiculed in early missionary days as "the work of the devil."

"Before they became Christians, religion was the very core of life for the Indian, " Mr. FitzGerald explained. "The native American's greatest tragedy has been the loss of his own natural sense of worship.

"In many cases, all the Church gave the Indian was an insistence on the white man's culture. It did not demonstrate for him Christ's love of the poor. It forgot that Christ himself was the foremost advocate of self determination."

The ten denominations meeting together made their reports and studied results -- the Episcopal Church, the American Baptist Convention, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Church of the Brethren, Church of God, Lutheran Council, Reformed Church in America, United Church of Christ, United Methodist, and the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

Out of the three-day program of panels, denominational meetings, reports and discussions, patterns emerged -- definite ideas and proposals of what the Church can do to help give back to the Indian that precious "self determination" he lost so long ago.

These general findings are practical as guidelines for the Strategy/Screening and Action Committee and the individual denominational committees which make up JSAC.

They can be just as useful for dioceses, local congregations and all Christians who want to be "their brother's keeper" in a constructive and positive way.

These are some of the general suggestions:

* Education is of special importance to the Indian. Without it employment will continue to be a major problem, and leaders scarce. But all schools, BIA, public and church, need constant reminding that the Indian's own sense of worth is forever diminished if education separates him from his own culture, history and native gifts.

More scholarships must be available, and Indians urged to use them. They must be placed in responsible positions as soon as it is possible for them to fill these spots.

Talent must be encouraged at an early age, and incentives for leadership developed while children are young.

Indians should be trained for professions as fast as possible -- not simply because they are needed for specialized work among their people, but also because the young must have models.

Such schools as the ecumenical Cook Christian Training School at Tempe, Arizona, need support. This school has trained laymen, clergy and teachers for many denominations, including the Episcopal Church.

The Dakota Leadership Training Program, developed by the Diocese of North Dakota and the Diocese of South Dakota is an example of what the Church can do.

The program is for both reservation and urban Indians and is ecumenical. Both Bishop George T. Masuda of North Dakota and Bishop Walter H. Jones of South Dakota have given great support to this work for the 40,000 Indians of their jurisdictions, training laymen and clergy.

* The urban Indian has some special problems. Most have not been prepared in any way for life in the city. They arrive, looking for jobs, and there are none. There is little adequate housing they can afford.

They are displaced people and their frustrations bring on apathy and alcoholism. Children become school drop-outs. Discouragement among youth is so tragic and intense that the suicide rate among these young people is far higher than the national average.

There are ways to help native Americans find a better life in the cities. The American Indian Movement has done much in Minneapolis to improve the lot of the urban Indian. He has been given job-training and helped with housing through efforts of AIM cooperating with the Housing staff of the Model Cities Program.

* When money is scarce one explores all possible sources for help. None of the denominations belonging to JSAC has large sums to spend on Indian work.

Funds distributed through JSAC and members, such as the Episcopal Church, are released for long-range goals and self determination projects.

The Rev. George A. Smith, chairman of the Episcopal Indian Committee, stressed the importance of understanding the structure of individual denominations. Father Smith, who is from Cass Lake, Minn., suggested that all Episcopalians learn to understand the diocesan structure. Often local needs for Indian work can be met with diocesan money, or by funds given through the diocese.

Often grants, fellowships and scholarships go unused because people don't know they exist.

Watch that local (or national) church funds aren't used for jobs agencies should be doing.

An example: on a reservation area, Indians didn't have transportation to get them to a doctor or a hospital. Rather than using church funds, the Episcopalians are pushing HEW to fulfill its own responsibility and furnish the transportation.

* The Indian has been called "the most legislated person in the world."

The entire Church community can make an effective protest against injustice if Christians will acquaint themselves with legislative matters which benefit -- or hurt -- the Indian -- and then act!

The Denver group responded to two such matters. The first concerned Alaska where Bishop William J. Gordon, Jr., has described the current territorial crisis as "the last chance for the American people to play fair with the Indian."

The JSAC group protested to the President of the United States, by wire, on the explosion of the five megaton bombs at Amchitka. In doing so, they upheld the Alaskan's viewpoint; that the explosion would "place the Aleut natives in direct jeopardy."

Second, the group urged "all legal, political and other action necessary" be used to compel "the State of Colorado to honor its legal and moral obligations to Indian students throughout the country, who desire to attend Fort Lewis College (without payment of tuition) now and in the future."

This was a promise made to the Indians in 1910 when the Federal Government gave Colorado 6,300 acres of land and the Fort Lewis school. In return, Colorado agreed that it would admit "qualified Indian students to said school on a tuition-free basis, regardless of numbers and residence .. . ."

Last July Colorado's legislature and governor passed legislation which terminated scholarships for non-resident Indian students at Fort Lewis.

* Last, and most important of all, the JSAC meeting called on the Church to be The Church -- the Body of Christ -- serving the needs of native Americans, rather than responding as competing denominations.

This often happened during the past century. Rather than becoming a uniting agency, the Church, in its Indian ministry, was often a divisive force. Sometimes the trusting Indian was placed in the unhappy position of being first, a denominational member, and second a Christian.

There were times when white clergymen didn't help the situation. Indians were treated as children, given no responsibilities and asked to make no decisions.

With this kind of background it is no wonder that today's church is considered suspect by many proponents of self determination for the native American.

Vine Deloria, Jr., one of the speakers for the JSAC group, pointed out the ecology crisis faced today "because the white man has never truly loved the earth -- which God created, The white man has ravished and destroyed that gift."

The Church can be the Church by simply being Christian -- in the one-to-one relationship, which every Indian -- and every human being -- needs so desperately.

And the Christian is capable of fulfilling that kind of relationship because Christ himself practiced it, and showed his disciples how effective it could be in living.