Day 17 - CHRISTMAS THROUGH INDIAN EYES

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Day 17 - CHRISTMAS THROUGH INDIAN EYES - is here:

http://maninthemaze.blogspot.com/2011/12/christmas-through-indian-eyes.html

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FROM SITTING BULL

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I am a red man.

 If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man

 he would have made me so in the first place.

 He put in your heart certain wishes and plans,

 in my heart he put other and different desires.

 Each man is good in his sight.

 It is not necessary for Eagles to be Crows.

 We are poor... but we are free.

 No white man controls our footsteps.

 If we must die...we die defending our rights. 

 Sitting Bull (1831-1890)

 Hunkpapa Sioux War Chief

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THE PROBLEM WITH MISSIONARIES

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It is no accident that the world's

two largest and most widespread religions

include a missionary imperative.

Unlike faithful Hindus, Jews, Taoists,

and practitioners of Shinto, Christians and

Muslims are expected to carry the Good News

and the Islamic call to faith, respectively,

to the far corners of the world. Although they

disagree on the precise nature of God's revelation

and the paths to the ultimate goal, adherents in

both traditions agree that their faith incorporates

a missionary mandate. Far too often in both

traditions, however, a narrow understanding of

mission has combined with cultural imperialism

and military power in ways that destroyed any

witness to God's love and mercy.
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.Examples of missionary-related abuses abound.

The history of the spread of Christianity and Islam

in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas (for

Christianity) is a checkered one at best.

Pick a continent and study the behavior of

those who came in the name of these religions.

Raw power and conquest sometimes dominated

the process. Conversion by force is often inter-

twined with moving stories of people whose faith

and courage changed them and their communities

in many positive ways. Certain missionaries made

life-changing contributions, making possible

greater opportunities in health care, education,

and the economy, but celebrating the positive

doesn't tell the whole story. When missionary

zeal is informed by absolute truth claims

defining who is "saved" and what is acceptable,

the propagation of religion frequently

includes sinister dimensions.

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The California missions system (1769-1834)

as founded and developed by Father Juipero

Serra exemplifies the problem. Serra's piety,

courage, and commitment to evangelize

Native Americans have been affirmed by

his critics as well as by those who advocated

for his beatification in 1988 (a formal step

toward canonization as a saint in the Roman

Catholic tradition). A professor of theology,

Serra left Spain for the mission field of the

new world in 1749. By the time of his death

in 1782, he had walked some twenty-four

thousand miles through Mexico and California

and established twenty-one Franciscan missions.

However noble his intentions, his methods and

close cooperation with Spanish government

and military officials were cruelly devastating

to the indigenous people. The mission was,

in fact, part of a larger strategy of colonization

and conquest. Serra and his fellow missionaries

traveled to new territory with Spanish military

contingents and apparently understood
themselves as agents of both God
and the civil government.
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Serra and others like him viewed the

native population as savage heathens

who had to be disciplined as children.

Their version of discipline would warrant

state intervention and charges of child

abuse in California today. The Franciscans

were convinced that cultural conversion was

a prerequisite to conversion to Christianity.

With righteous determination, "they went

about the task of dismantling what they

regarded as backward traditional lifeways,

social structures, mores, and values of

Indian peoples." Missionaries destroyed

towns, separated families, instituted slavery

and economic exploitation, applied religious

coercion ruthlessly, and carried out various

types of corporal punishment.
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 George Tinker, a Native American seminary
 professor and pastor to Lutherans and Episcopalians
 in Denver, closely examines Serra and three

other highly respected historical missionary

leaders and concludes that they were naive

and possibly unwitting partners in genocide.

Without question, the California mission is

part of a larger pattern beginning with the

subjugation of Aztecs and other native peoples

in Mexico. Franciscans, Augustinians, and

Dominicans carried the enterprise north

into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and

California.
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The uncritical mixing of religious, political,

military, and economic realms in the missionary

conquests of the Southwest offends contemporary

sensitivities and contradicts the cherished

principle of the separation of church and

state. It is far closer to the military, political,

and religious expansion of Islam in the seventh

and eighth centuries. These and missionary

movements in Asia and Africa reflect another

era and outdated worldviews. In different

ways at different times, Christian and Muslim

missions rested on absolute truth claims -

stated or assumed - that theirs was a superior

culture and religion. In fairness to early

Islamic expansion - across North Africa and

into Spain, through the Fertile Crescent and

across Mesopotamia and Persia into India -

there is little evidence of widespread conversion

at the point of a sword.

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From WHEN RELIGION BECOMES EVIL

by Charles Kimball
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UNWRITTEN SCRIPTURES

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A missionary once undertook to instruct

a group of Indians in the truths of his

holy religion. He told them of the creation

of the earth in six days, and of the fall of

our first parents by eating an apple.

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The courteous savages listened attentively,

and, after thanking him, one related in his

turn a very ancient tradition concerning

the origin of the maize. But the missionary

plainly showed his disgust and disbelief,

indignantly saying:

"What I delivered to you were sacred truths,

but this that you tell me is mere

fable and falsehood!"

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"My brother," gravely replied the

offended Indian, "it seems that you have

not been well grounded in the rules of

civility. You saw that we, who practice

these rules, belived your stories; why, then

do you refuse to credit ours?"

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Every religion has its Holy Book,

and ours was a mingling of history,

poetry, and prophecy, of precepts and

folklore, even such as the modern reader

finds within the covers of his Bible.

This Bible of ours was our whole

literature, a living Book, sowed as

precious seed by our wisest sages, and

springing anew in the wondering eyes

and upon the innocent lips of little

children. Upon its hoary wisdom of

proverb and fable, its mystic and

legendary lore thus sacredly preserved

and transmitted from father to son,

was based in large part on our

customs and philosophy.

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Charles Alexander Eastman

[Ohiyesa] Santee Sioux

THE SOUL OF THE INDIAN

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A GIFT FROM THE INDIANS

This is a passage from The Soul of an Indian,

published in 1911. It was written by Ohiyesa,

a Santee Sioux Indian from Minnesota, who took on

the white man's name Charles Alexander Eastman.

He knew traditional ways and believed in the workings

of the Great Mystery, yet also believed in Christ,

went to Dartmouth, and received a M.D. from

Boston Univ. He became an adviser to presidents,

and spent much of his life building bridges

between the two cultures.

Amazon lists a number of sellers who have his

writings in stock - all have been republished

in recent years.

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I am an Indian;

and while I have learned much from

civilization, I have never lost my Indian sense

of right and justice.

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When I reduce civilization to its most basic terms,

it becomes a symbol of life based on trade.

Each man stakes his powers, the product of his

labor, his social, political, and religious standing

against his neighbor. To gain what?

To gain control over his fellow workers,

and the results of their labor.

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Is there not something worthy of perpetuation

in our Indian spirit of democracy, where Earth,

our mother, was free to all, and no one sought to

impoverish or enslave his neighbor?

Where the good things of Earth were not ours to

hold against our brothers and sisters, but were ours

to use and enjoy together with them, and with whom

it was our privilege to share?

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Indeed, our contribution to our nation and

the world is not to be measured in the material realm.

Our greatest contribution has been spiritual and

philosophical. Silently, by example only, in

wordless patience, we have held stoutly to our

native vision of personal faithfulness to duty and

devotion to a trust. We have not advertised our

faithfulness nor made capital of our honor.

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But again and again we have proved our worth

as citizens of this country by our constancy in the

face of hardship and death. Prejudice and racial

injustice have been no excuse for our breaking

our word. The simplicity and fairness has cost us dear.

It has cost us our land and our freedom, and even the

extinction of our race as a separate and unique people.

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But, as an ideal, we live and will live, not only in

the splendor of our past, the poetry of our legends

and art, not only in the interfusion of our blood

with yours, and in our faithful adherence to

the ideals of American citizenship,

but in the living heart

of the nation.

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CHRISTMAS THROUGH INDIAN EYES

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This is just a sample of what was in

Day 17 (yesterday) of our Advent Series,
which runs through Christmas Day.

There's short bits of text, lots of imagery,

and more, each day - Dec 1 through Dec 25.

It's all about Christmas,

and the Second Coming, and more.

Good Music!

Check Christmas Through Indian Eyes,

and then graze onward!

http://www.maninthemaze.com/theadventseries/day17.html

SAMOANS AND THE PIMA INDIANS

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In those particular sections of

The URANTIA BOOK

which discuss mankind's racial makeup

and early development, it states that Pacific

Islanders - referred to as "the brown man" - were

a combination of the red and yellow races.

This so-called "brown man" is "kin" to

Native Americans, they're cousins in a way.

The relatively pure strains of the red man were

forced out of Asia by the yellow man, and came

across the Bering Strait to populate the America's.

But this amalgamation of the red and yellow races,

this "brown man," was also driven out, and headed

to the east, eventually populating the islands

and peninsulas of the Pacific.

When I was in the Pacific Islands in the 90's, one of

the first things that struck me was how much some

Islanders resemble American Indians in physical

characteristics, particularly facial. I had served

as a press liaison at four conventions of the NCAI,

the National Congress of American Indians,

the oldest and largest of Indian organizations.

There were over 350 tribes/reservations

that were members. I had seen a LOT of Indians,

and while in the Pacific I kept thinking that I was

seeing a lot more of them.

Anyhow, when I was looking through a book

(LIFE PRAYERS, 1996, HarperSanFrancisco)

of prayers, poems, etc. about the human journey,

looking for something appropriate to the disaster

in Samoa, I came across this:

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Weep, my unfortunate people!

All this you will see take place.

Weep, my unfortunate people!

For the waters will overwhelm the land.

Weep, my unhappy relatives!

You will learn all.

Weep, my unfortunate relatives!

You will learn all.

The waters will overwhelm the mountains.

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Pima Song

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It should be noted that the Pima Indians

live in southern Arizona, in the Sonoran Desert,

far, far away from "the waters."

Of course, some might read this as a prophecy

regarding global warming, as well as tsunamis.

Whatever, it's all "end times" stuff.

The fact that it has origin in a desert culture

however, is mind-boggling, if not

downright spooky.

What did you just say? There's no connection

whatsoever between any of this?

Oh, O.K.

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