Last year, around the end of Nov, I asked the kids at Clinton if they had learned what Thanksgiving was about at school. They said they learned that a long time ago, the pilgrims saved the Indians because the Indians were hungry and couldn't get food. I was horrified at their response. And I was so mad, I think I stuttered before getting out the real story of Native people.
This year I began early, the end of October, the beginning of Nov talking about thanksgiving. A basic generic story of how the pilgrims had come from another country and since they had come from another country they didn't know how to work the land and they didn't know how to grow food here. The native people were from here so they knew the land so they had food. I asked the kids, what do you think the indians did when they saw that the pilgrims were hungry and had no food?
One ten-year-old boy said, "They gave the pilgrims food but they shouldn't have done it. Look how we get treated today. I wouldn't have shared my food with them."
The entire dilemma of being Native and being Christian can be summed in a single question. And it is a question that I have wrestled with my entire life. The question being: knowing what I know now, would I have chosen to help that group of hungry people. I am sure that if those Indians had chosen not to share, not much would have changed the outcome, we just wouldn't celebrate Thanksgiving.
But it is an issue that most Native Christians have to deal with or figure out how to ignore every thanksgiving. Native Christian pastors have to figure out how to preach about giving thanks knowing the horrendous things that happend to Native people. Knowing that we have never been able to properly grieve. Knowing that even though Nov is Native American Heritage month, we are still invisable...
My initial response to the question has been the same as that ten-year-old boy's. I wouldn't have shared my food. But that response goes against my upbringing, both Native and Christian. So I usually grumble and say well, I would have given them the food I don't like. I preached at another revival this past week where I talked about that little boy. I talked about my anger with the church, about my work in Clinton, and about my being able to let go of that angry. To forgive.
That we who have been hurt by the church and so many people are out who have been hurt in the name of God, Native and non-native. We who have been hurt could go out and do something different because we are the church too. It was hard for me, the whole topic was hard because part of me wanted to agree with that child. But it was the other part of me that answered him. I told him that as Christians, we were meant to live a certain way and God intends that way to include sharing. The Native people long ago also knew there was a good way to live and a way that wasn't so good. No matter what happened later, they chose to live the good way.
But the hard part was that it seemed that those long ago Natives knew all about loving the neighbor and the people who were told by Jesus to love the neighbor did not love the neighbor and now Native people must wrestle with whether or nor they would have.
Wesley's simple rule "do no harm" is so much harder to live out because so much harm has already been done. Native people have a right to their anger but seeing anger and bitterness in a child's eyes doesn't seem like the good way. Native Christians and others who have been hurt by the church, we are the church too and we can do something different. We do not have to perpetuate the hurt done to us by the good church folk. Or another way of saying that would be, we Native people can continue to do as we have already done, we can share our food.
