The Way Forward: Is This World Our Home?
Ideally what we believe and what we do in this world are the same.
Today we share a piece from Lenore Three Stars (Oglala Lakota), one of our regular contributing writers. You can find a short bio and her writing for The Ecological Disciple here on her author's page. You can also visit her webpage at www.lenorethreestars.com.
Ehanna, a very long time ago, the people would eat the buffalo, but the buffalo would eat the people too – eeuw! It was a terrible time of disharmony. So, creator told all Creation to bring their best runners for a great race around He Sapa, the Black Hills. If the two-leggeds won, the buffalo would no longer eat the people. If the four-leggeds won, the buffalo would continue to eat the people. The birds with two legs were on the side of the people.
All the creatures wanted to run, even the slow ones, but the race would be grueling, lasting for days and days. The sun was so hot many racers fell from exhaustion, and some decided to take a swim and a nap. Near the end, the people's best runner seemed to be no match for the strong young buffalo.
Now, Magpie was not a strong flier, so she had been resting on the back of the strong young buffalo. Suddenly, she flew up toward the sun (that's how she got her glistening feathers) then she swooped down across the finish line just ahead of the young buffalo.
The Buffalo Nation agreed that it had been a good race and they would offer their lives so the people could live. The people agreed that they would treat the buffalo with respect as relatives and not take more than they needed to eat.
I sometimes offer a bit of my own story because it may help people see an Indigenous perspective through my lens. There is no such thing as a culture-free perspective. We all come from somewhere that shapes our worldview and forms how we see and experience life. Our stories can teach us that what we believe in this world is not more important than what we do. Ideally, these are the same.
For instance, if our worldview as believers is that the earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it (Psalm 24), then that is how we treat the earth—in a sacred way, with love. Lakota people often refer to earth as Unci Maka, Grandmother Earth—a kinship term of respect and love.
Settlers were known to remark on the pristine wilderness they encountered in North America as if it had been untouched. However, millions of Indigenous peoples lived here for millennia in a reciprocal relationship with their homelands. Living in this manner meant that they did not take from the land without giving something back and they didn’t take more than they needed. Living with the land, and not just on it, resulted in a healthy, beautiful homeland that only settlers called wilderness.
When I decided to follow Creator Jesus, I was already an adult and a mother. I was not aware that for centuries, Christianity had been imposing a Euro-cultural template for Christianizing Native peoples. I didn’t come to faith because of evangelistic tactics that converted me – which sounds like conquest language to me – but it was a long relational learning process that helped me experience Jesus as Creator, Son, Healer.
I said Yes to Creator Jesus within the formation of Euro-western Christianity and I learned how to be a culturally white Christian woman who knew correct beliefs. The problem was that my theology was Euro-centric, but the rest of me was not. I silently yearned to follow Jesus as a Lakota woman. Over time, the dissonance between the dualisms of correct religious beliefs and Indigenous thinking became a tension that I couldn’t ignore.
One example of this tension was a common Christian refrain, “this world is not our home, we’re only passing through it.” Another tension was exegeting Genesis with man as the masterpiece with power over all creation. Until I learned the difference between Indigenous and Western worldviews, I didn't yet have the language for my unrest. I recognized that the unsettling refrain represented a worldview that devalues the sacredness of creation because Christian salvation is in the next world, so mankind doesn’t have a sacred responsibility to our relative, Unci Maka, here and now.
Mitakuye Oyasin is a Lakota way of thinking that means “we are all related.” Being a good relative is my duty. A good relative responds when right relationship is broken by finding ways to move towards harmony. If my theology doesn’t help me be a good relative, then I need better theology.
Native people can see a correlation between how the earth is treated and how women are treated. Traditionally, Lakota culture honors women as life and culture-carriers, the strength of the people. Today, on some reservations, Native women are being murdered at ten time the national rate and one of three Native women have experienced rape. The phenomenon of "Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women" is connected to human trafficking often in concert with extraction industries.
Lakota creation stories, in part, tell us that our ancient ones emerged from the earth in He Sapa, the Black Hills, a place we call "the heart of everything that is." He Sapa is the specific homeland that our people are responsible to care for, as it always cared for us. It’s a national forest now, but it's still sacred land to us, and ceremony is still carried out there, seeking balance and harmony on behalf of all Creation. You don’t have to be Native to have a sacred land relationship. I’ve been known to say that Wendell Berry had a Lakota heart when he wrote, “There are no unsacred places, there are only the sacred and the desecrated.”
In scripture, the first creation story in Genesis 1, tells us that man was made last, which suggests that man is the most dependent on the rest of creation. Native creation stories often regard mankind as the younger brother who needed to learn from his older relatives in the natural world.
In the second creation story in Genesis 2, Adam is made from Adamah, the earth, the “dust of the ground.” Relationally, we are the land. During the church season of Lent, we hear the words from Genesis 3:19, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return." I’m Oglala Lakota and Oglala means “scatter one’s own.” To pantomime an understanding of this meaning, a Lakota elder sprinkled her arm with earth to indicate that we are people who come from the land.
I've come to believe that Native creation stories are our history of experiencing Jesus as Creator who communicated healing and salvation to all his creation. Creator Jesus has always been, and is still everywhere present in his creation, working out his healing purpose.
Circling back to the opening story, what message did you hear? Our oral tradition doesn’t necessarily offer explanations, but you can learn truths from the stories. Maybe you understood that when harmony was broken, it was important to restore balance. Or maybe you observed Creator didn’t produce the answer and do the work to restore balance. And maybe you noticed that humans didn't automatically assume hierarchical power over the nonhuman relatives, and that the entire community of creation chose to participate in the ceremony to restore balance.
“For God so loved the world (cosmos)” implies that Creator’s love is not just for humans but is big enough to include the whole community of creation, human and nonhuman. In Genesis, Creator told Noah that his rainbow covenant was “between me and everything living on earth.” We saw the response of creation when Jesus died – the sky went black in the middle of the day, the earth shook, and rocks split. Creation knew the immensity of this new thing. Romans 8 describes creation as groaning alongside humankind for full healing and liberation when Creator Jesus makes the world new and right again.
Indigenous thinking informs my theology. From a Lakota perspective, life is a sacred circle, not linear. The Tree of Life that symbolized Shalom in the first garden reappears in the Shalom of Revelation 22:2 – the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations, every tongue, nation and tribe. Again, I see the Wahpe Oyate, the plant nation, still living out its commitment to the life of the two-leggeds. Mitakuye Oyasin is not about an eschatological event at the end, but an ongoing orthopraxy (correct belief put into practice) of choosing to be a good relative today.
Lenore Three Stars
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