Service of Repentance
Please Enter in Silence
My Friends, I have been asked to show you
my heart. I am glad to have a chance to do
so. I want the white people to understand my
people. Some of you think an Indian is like a
wild animal. This is a great mistake. I will tell
you all about our people, and then you can
judge whether an Indian is a man or not…. It
does not require many words to speak the
truth. What I have to say will come from my
heart, and I will speak with a straight tongue.
-- Inmutooyahlatlat (Chief Joseph), Nez Perce
When Joseph spoke these
words in a Washington,
D.C., interview more
than a century ago, most
Americans were not
ready to listen. For four
hundred years, the world
had failed to understand
Indian people, and the
watchword of the day
was change – change for
Indian people, not
understanding of them.
And so, the United States government furthered
what the Europeans had initiated, and Indian
nations were herded onto military reservations and
kept under close supervision.
As part of an aggressive campaign to assimilate
them into American society, government boarding
schools were established whose stated purpose was
the obliteration of Indian languages and the total
eradication of cultures.
Indian parents experienced the agonizing pain of
having their children forcibly wrenched from them
and sent to these schools to become “civilized.”
Acculturation was unleashed as a weapon of war.
The tragedy was that many victims of the
boarding school experience came away with a
distorted perception of themselves.
For years they had been told that to be Indian was
bad, and the good Indians were those who were
able to throw the past away and become
Americans. Successful “civilized” Indians were held
up as role models and placed in positions of
authority by the federal government in matters
relating to Indian affairs.
….Today, the exploits of white heroes are
taught in elementary schools. Indian children,
who are forced to attend these schools, are told
that George Washington is a hero…. But white
children never learn what Indian children know
– that George Washington killed Indians….
In American schools, Indian children are taught
that Abraham Lincoln emancipated slaves. But
white children are never told that this
emancipation only pertained to black slaves.
Indian slavery existed in California until long after
the Civil war….
Ulysses S. Grant was responsible for the
death of Apaches; Andrew Jackson killed
Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee; Thomas
Jefferson sanctioned the massacre of
Shawnee and Kickapoo in the Ohio Valley….
My Brothers and Sisters… if we are in Christ…
if we are to be a New Creation… then the
way to go forward is to first go back. Today
we recognize our Sin in a desire to move
forward in new awareness and new
relationship. The previous excerpts I have
read to you are from a book entitled, From
the Heart: Voices of the American Indian,
edited by Lee Miller;
so too are the passages crafted into a
litany below. We are invited to enter
into a time of collective remembrance
and repentance.
North District:
The earth is our mother. She nourishes
us; that which we put into the ground
she returns to us, and healing plants
she gives us likewise. If we are
wounded, we go to our mother and
seek to lay the wounded part against
her, to be healed.
-- Bedagi (Big Thunder), Penobscot
West District:
We were driven from our corn last
year by the people about Kennebeck,
and many of us died. We had no
powder and shot to kill venison and
foul with, to prevent it. If you English
were our friends as you pretend you
are, you would not suffer us to starve
as we did.
-- Madokawando, Penobscot
Central District:
Why do you sell brandy to our young
men? They are not used to it – it
makes them crazy. Even your own
people, who are accustomed to strong
liquors, sometimes become drunk, and
fight with knives. Sell no more strong
drink to the Indians, if you would avoid
mischief.
-- Hackensack delegation
Platform Participants:
The white people never cared for
land or deer or bear…. When we dig
roots we make little holes. When we
build houses, we make little holes….
We shake down acorns and pinenuts.
We don’t chop down the trees. We
only use dead wood.
But the white people plow up the
ground, pull down the trees, kill
everything…. The spirit of the land
hates them. They blast out trees and
stir it up to its depths. They saw up
the trees. That hurts them. The
Indians never hurt anything, but the
white people destroy all.
They blast rocks and scatter them on
the earth. The rock says, “Don’t. You
are hurting me.” But the white
people pay no attention. When the
Indians use rocks, they take little
round ones for their cooking…. How
can the spirit of the earth like the
White man? … Everywhere the white
man has touched it, it is sore.
-- Kate Luckie, Wintu
Leader:
It is said that in the Christian’s guide, that God is
merciful, and they that are his followers are like him.
How much mercy do you think has been shown
towards Indians, their wives and their children? Not
much, we think. No…. Have you any regard for your
wives and children, for those delicate sons and
daughters?
Would you like to see
them slain and laid in
heaps, and their
bodies devoured by
the vultures and wild
beasts of prey? and
their bones bleaching
in the sun and air, till
they moulder away,
or were covered by
the falling leaves of
the forest, and not
resist?
No. Your hearts would
break grief, and with all
the religion and
knowledge you have, it
would not impede your
force to take vengeance
upon your foe, that had
so cruelly conducted
thus…. Can, or do you
think we have no
feeling?
--William Apess, Pequot
South District:
When you first came to our
coasts, you sometimes had
no food; we gave you our
beans and corn, and
relieved you with our
oysters and fish; and now,
for recompense, you
murder our people.
-- (Name not given),
Montauk
Platform Participants:
The Ottawas were greatly reduced in
numbers on account of the small-pox….
This small-pox was sold to them shut up
in a tin box, with the strict injunction
not to open their box on their way
homeward, but only when they should
reach their country; and that this box
contained something that would do
them great good, and their people! …
Accordingly, after they reached home
they opened the box; but behold there
was another tin box inside, smaller …
and when they opened the last one
they found nothing but mouldy
particles in this last little box! … But
alas, alas!
Pretty soon burst out a terrible sickness
among them…. Lodge after lodge was
totally vacated – nothing but the
dead bodies lying here and there in
their lodges – entire families being
swept off with the ravages of this
terrible disease….
A continuous village some fifteen or
sixteen miles long … was entirely
depopulated and laid waste….
-- Andrew Blackbird, Odawa
East District:
I have seen two generations of my
people die. Not a man of the two
generations is alive now but myself. I
know the difference between peace and
war better than any men in my
country…. Why will you take by force
what you may have quietly by love?
Why will you destroy us who supply you
with food? What can you get by war?
-- Wahunsonacock, Powhatan
Leader:
We proceeded… to burn the Indian cabins.
Some of the men seemed to enjoy this cruel
work, laughing heartily at the curling flames,
but to me it appeared a shocking sight…. But
when we came… to cut down the fields of
corn, I could scarcely refrain from tears….
I saw everywhere around, the footsteps of
little Indian children, where they had lately
played under the shade of their rustling corn.
When we are gone, thought I, they will
return and… with tearful eyes, they will ask
their mothers, and the reply will be, “The
white people did it, -- the Christians did it!”
-- Lieutenant Francis Marion, British Army
West District:
I noticed … a small group of Indians who sat
under a tree … all were dirty, ragged, and
lean….
Soon an Indian woman and a young girl …
hurried into the group, laid down … packs
and opened them….
I could see spread out there some dingy
meat, evidently waste from a butcher’s shop,
some discarded scraps of stale bread, and
other stray odds and ends of food…. I felt a
wave of fury toward our government’s
whole Indian policy….
-- Thomas Tibbles, United States
East District:
They told us that Indian ways were
bad. They said we must get civilized. I
remember that word too. It means
“be like the white man.” …And the
books told how bad the Indians had
been to the white men – burning
their towns and killing their women
and children….
We all wore white man’s clothes and
ate white man’s food and went to
white man’s churches and spoke
white man’s talk. And so after a
while we also began to say Indians
were bad. We laughed at our own
people and their blankets and
cooking pots and sacred societies and
dances….
-- Sun Elk, Taos
North District:
And so the days passed by, and the changes slowly
came to settle within me…. Gone were the vivid
pictures of my parents, sisters and brothers.
Only a blurred vision of what used to be.
Desperately, I tried to cling to the faded past which
was slowly being erased from my mind.
-- Metha Bercier, Turtle Mountain Chippewa
South District:
Does this generation love justice enough
to ask that it be shown to the red men
[women and children]? Have we not as
a people fixed the brutal maxim in our
language, “the only good Indian is a
dead Indian?”
We laugh at the saying now as a good
jest, but the cheeks of our descendants
will redden with shame when they
read the coarse brutality of our wit.
-- Fletcher Johnson, United States
Central District:
Before you determine on a measure so
unjust, look up to God, who has made us
as well as you. We hope He will not
permit you to destroy the whole of our
nation…. The land we live on, our fathers
received from God, and they
transmitted it to us, for our children, and
we cannot part with it.
-- Cornplanter, Seneca
ALL:
I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just.
-- Thomas Jefferson, United States
Leader:
The blood that has been spilled by
generations of Native Americans is not
something for which we are able to say, “I’m
sorry!” and walk away. True repentance
means that we change our ways; we work to
right the wrongs.
How can we
make what is so
wrong, right, as
long as we
continue to deny
the atrocity
happened in the
first place?
ALL:
God forgive us for
those times when
we just don’t
want to know the
truth, and we
ignore it.
Leader:
In the words of Rev. Dr.
George E. Tinker of the
Osage Nation, General
Conference 2012:
My friends, there’s a lot
of history to be owned.
And there’s a lot of this
stuff that has yet to be
learned, and it’s being
concealed from you.
You have to do the work now to go dig it up, spade
the ground, and make fertile soul for the seed of the
Gospel to grow. That’s your job now. Together, all of
us repenting, all of us restoring balance to the world.
It’s not just about making disciples for Jesus Christ; it
really is about transforming the world, because the
world we have inherited is in bad, bad shape.
If we are to truly repent, the Hebrew word is
shoove, if we are to turn around, begin anew, the
first step is to listen to the story; to stand with our
Native American brothers and sisters; to learn
from them; to work with them on their terms –
not ours. This kind of repentance takes time…
more than a 20 minute service of worship.
ALL:
God, we rush through life, and take so
little notice of “the other.” Forgive us
we pray. Help us to step back and
allow you to recreate relationships
among us. Let this prayer begin a new
way of seeing, a new way of being.
May we work together and seek your
kingdom of shalom – wholeness and
harmony of body, self, spirit, mind, and
neighbor.
Lord, Have Mercy
Words: Liturgical Text; English versification,
John Thornburg
Music: Geronima Montoya (San Juan
Pueblo); transcribed by Carlton R. Young from
the CD Songs from the Tewa Mass
Music © 1994 The Tewa Indian Women’s
Choir Used with permission
O Lord, O Lord, visit
us with mercy. O
visit us with mercy.
O visit us with
mercy. O…
Christ, O Christ, visit
us with mercy. O
visit us with mercy.
O visit us with
mercy. O…
O Lord, O Lord,
visit us with
mercy. O visit us
with mercy. O
visit us with
mercy. O…
(last time add) O
visit us with
mercy.