Religious Or Spiritual Questions by Robert Francis

Home , Chickamauga Cherokee, Deliverance

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions

17. Could you please describe your worldview?

What exactly is a river? How does one define its boundaries? Can a river be separated, dug up, removed from its place? Can a river even exist apart from the entirety of the Earth or the entirety of the Universe?

What defines a human being? From my perspective, a human being is defined within the context of the People and the Land and beyond that as a part of the whole, an integrated aspect of the Earth and of the entirety of the Universe or of Creator/Creation. In my experience, when a traditional Chickamauga Cherokee person asks the questions “Who are you?” and “Where are you from?” they are really asking “Who are your people and to what place are you connected? Where do you fit in?”

Those of the Abrahamic Traditions are Peoples of the Book. We Chickamauga Cherokees are a People of the Fire. We speak in terms of the Elder Fires Above, of the Sacred Fire Entrusted to our People and of the Fire that Burns in the Heart. Just as the Fire that Burns in the Heart connects the individual person, so the Sacred Fire is a direct connection between the People as a whole and the Elder Fires Above and by extension to the Center of the Universe and to every part and aspect of the Universe. Everything is connected. We may look out and see what looks like empty space, what scientists mistook for empty space for hundreds of years, but it is not empty. It is filled with connection. The Earth is a living organism, but so is the Universe as a whole: One Living Organism – Unity in Diversity – Harmony. There is no real division, not even a real divide between energy and matter. Matter is simply energy in another form. There is also no real divide between the spiritual and the physical. Since everything is connected, since each one is a part or aspect of the whole, what each one does has an effect on the entirety.

18. How would you describe your faith in God?

The way I see it or from my own observation and experience, the Creator/Apportioner of the Universe, the source of all being, indwells all of creation, and makes all creation, not just humankind, in Creator/Apportioner’s image. Creator/Apportioner meets with us, where we are, walking with us, talking with us, calling creation into co-creatorship, communing and providing the

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis center of all communion, all community, all life. Far from maintaining complete control, Creator/Apportioner grants freedom to creation, to all creation, from the tiniest atomic particle to the largest galaxy. All creation has freedom, even the freedom to make horrendous mistakes, to become unbalanced. Creator/Apportioner is there to help all who seek help in bringing creation from chaos or in bringing balance from imbalance. This is how I see and understand it, at the same time; I understand that the Creator/Apportioner of the Universe, the great mystery, is beyond all attempts at analysis or description.

19. Is the one you call “Creator/Apportioner” the same as the God of the Bible?

To begin with, the word “God” is not in the Bible, at least not in the original Hebrew or Greek. It’s a Germanic/English word originally used in reference to any spirit understood as more powerful than a human being. Maybe that’s why some people who use that word as a referent for Deity are so concerned about which God someone may be talking about.

Now, I will answer the question with another question: Is “the God of the Bible” also the Creator or Creative Spirit or Life of the entire Universe?

There is Deity and there is what people say about Deity. What people say about Deity is, by definition, theology. There are many theologies. Many things are said about Deity. There are private theologies and group theologies. A serious problem arises when human beings become enamored of their own theology or of their group’s theology to the extent that they mistake their theology for the unlimited and transcendent reality of Deity – that Great Mystery which may neither be defined by theology nor contained within the pages of any book.

20. Do you believe in Jesus Christ? If so, how would you describe your belief in Jesus Christ? How and when did you come to faith in Jesus?

I consider Jesus Christ to be Creator-Offspring born as a Jew in Palestine, some 2,000 years ago. As I read the accounts of his life in the context of the place and time, I see that he lived his life and gave his life and took up his life again all for the purpose of decolonization and cultural restoration.

Having been raised in a Christian household with parents who took me to church and taught me from the Bible in our home, my faith in Jesus goes back as far as I can remember. At the age of nine years, I had what could be described as the standard, General Baptist salvation experience: going forward in an altar call and later being baptized. This experience was very meaningful for me. However, looking back I see that, while I am sure the Spirit of Creator was involved, I was conditioned by Sunday School teachers and preachers toward hyper-guilt feelings and to an abject terror of a controlling, vengeful, wrathful god, and I was acting on that conditioning. The unfounded guilt and fear did not

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis permanently go away with the salvation experience, so I returned to the “altar” several times over the course of the next few years. It is truly only by the grace of Creator/Apportioner that I ever came to a healthy relationship with Jesus Christ.

I appreciate the stories recorded in the Synoptic Gospels for the very human picture of Jesus they present. I appreciate the Gospel of John for the expanded vision of Creator-Offspring, the Cosmic Christ, if you will, as Matthew Fox puts it, the Word or Order of the universe, the one whose acts, if written down, would fill the earth with the books. Putting the stories of Jesus within the context of our ancient Cherokee traditions, I have come to understand Jesus in terms of that whom Cherokees refer to as Creator-Offspring, the one who came to our land as Jiya Unega (White Otter) thousands of years before Jesus was born in Palestine, the Morning Star who shines brightest in the darkest part of the night when all other stars go dim, the one who shines not with his own light but with the light of the Sun and ultimately with the power and light of Creator/Apportioner. However, informed by our Cherokee culture, my understandings of Creator-Offspring are very inclusive. Creator-Offspring is the bread and the wine but also the corn bread and grape juice. Creator-Offspring is the air that we all breathe and the water of life that flows through all who live in the earth. Creator-Offspring is the lamb, the deer, the buffalo, the salmon and the whale slain that the people may live. Creator-Offspring is every new baby born among the people, among every people. Creator-Offspring is every good thing we see, hear, touch, smell and taste. Creator-Offspring was here before the missionaries and here before Jesus was born.

Even though I have pretty much lost faith in Christianity and in Christian doctrines, theologies and Christologies that began developing in the early centuries of the Common Era, I have never lost faith in Jesus. I no longer call myself a Christian, but I do consider myself to be a follower of Jesus. As such, the stories of his life, telling of a few things he did and said in Palestine over 2,000 years ago, are still of value to me. I do my best to live by the example presented there, the example of one who set out to bring decolonization and cultural restoration to his own colonized people. Even so, the relationship is not with a book or dependent on a book. Even if we had never had the Bible and had never heard of how Creator-Offspring was born, lived and died as Jesus of Nazareth, we would still have the relationship, just as millions, having never heard of Jiya Unega, still have the relationship.

21. What church experience have you had? Have you had any formal Bible training or education?

I was raised General Baptist. This denomination, close in doctrine and practice to the Freewill Baptists, is headquartered in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. When I was nine years old, I joined Brownwood General Baptist Church, in the village of Brownwood, Missouri. When I was 10 or 11, my family moved our membership

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis to New Hope General Baptist Church, in a large farming area known as The Old Field, between Advance and Painton, Missouri. This was the church in which my father had grown up, and my mother had also been a member there as a teenager and young adult. I might add that most of the families, who originally formed up that church, including my father’s family, were of Cherokee descent, even if few would openly identify themselves as such. As a teenager I served as youth song leader for our church and association. As a young adult, I was a Sunday school teacher, youth leader, church music director and a trustee of the church.

When I was 24 years old I married Janet Tucker. A year later, we moved to Ohio to live near her family. Janet, of mixed Ohio Indian ancestry, was raised Presbyterian. In Ohio, the two of us decided to join a Southern Baptist Church. We became members of the First Baptist Church of Logan, Ohio.

I officially announced my call to ministry in July 1985. This was something I had struggled with for the preceding 10 years. I was licensed to the Gospel ministry by the First Baptist Church of Logan, Ohio in October 1985. I was ordained for the ministry by the First Baptist Church of Logan, Ohio in September 1986. By that time, I had already been pastoring a church type mission in Hamden, Ohio for about seven months. While working toward a degree from Ohio University, I continued as a mission pastor in Ohio until October 1989, at which time, Janet and our children and I moved back to Missouri, where I served as a Southern Baptist Pastor first in the southeastern Missouri village of Perkins and later in the western Missouri town of Amsterdam. In May of 1996, I was awarded a Master of Divinity Degree from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. The first Indian Fellowship began in January 1999 in Joplin, Missouri; although not specifically “church” experience, I’ll include this: I served as helper for that fellowship and for other fellowships that started later. I continued serving as the pastor of Amsterdam Baptist Church until the end of May, 1999, after which time I began serving full-time as consultant/helper for what was originally called Indian Fellowships of Missouri and later called Mid American Indian Fellowships. In July 2004, I was officially licensed as a Mid American Indian Fellowships helper, along with nine others. In October 2005, the 10 of us were officially ordained as Mid American Indian Fellowships helpers.

22. You were a Baptist minister? Could you describe or relate your call to that ministry? How did you go from being a Baptist minister to where you are today?

In order to give a meaningful response to this question, I have to go back to a time long before I was a Baptist minister.

As a four-year-old child, I had a recurring dream in which my father and I were running for our lives, chased by terrifying cannibals who happened to be a well- respected white family from our church. The dream ended with our leaping into

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis the darkness to avoid being captured and eaten. That dream stayed with me. I can recall the visual details and feelings experienced during the dream as clearly now as I could after the first tearful and terrified awaking all those many years ago. This accounts for my being always somewhat wary of ulterior motives that may be hidden behind friendly faces and outstretched hands. Seldom letting down my guard, I have always been watchful for cannibals in places others may not suspect their presence, such as in department stores and churches.

I am Chickamauga Cherokee. I grew up in Missouri, the place to which many of our Chickamauga Cherokee people immigrated in the early 1800s, leaving the Trans-Appalachian region following long resistance against European-American conquest and expansionism. There are no Indian reservations in Missouri, a state in which Indian residence was outlawed for a century, a state which hardly acknowledges its Indian population even today. I didn’t grow up speaking Cherokee. The only formal ceremonies in which my family participated were those of the General Baptist Churches we attended: Sunday School, Preaching, Altar-Call, Baptism, Communion and Foot-Washing. However, in keeping with indigenous ways, I was raised to value oral tradition. There were many stories, mostly family stories going back two to four generations with just a couple of older stories linking us to a time before our world was torn apart. I was raised to pay close attention to significant dreams and visions. I was taught all things made by Creator have life, personhood and awareness. I was taught the relatedness of all things and the value of respect. I was also raised with the land. We had a few cash crops, but by-and-large my family practiced subsistence agriculture.

I remember coming home from Bible School to tell my momma, “The teacher said, ‘Animals don’t have souls.”

“You know better than that,” Momma said, “But don’t argue; you’ll never convince them.”

I remember hoeing watermelons with my daddy and hearing him talk about how even the little grass plants that we have to kill cry out when they are cut off from the roots.

I remember my grandma getting a far-off look in her eyes and saying, “In the old days, a hunter told the deer he was sorry.”

At age 14, I spent a week at a church camp near the St. Francis range of the Ozarks. The first thing we campers were told upon arrival was “Don’t go in the woods. There are snakes in the woods!” Considering this an unreasonable restriction, each day, while other campers were busy playing softball or volleyball, I slipped into the woods to find a quiet place to sit and listen and watch. I found it easier to hear the voice of Creator in quiet, secluded places, surrounded by trees and with the soft voices of birds. While sitting among

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis towering oaks on a hillside above the camp, I felt a distinct spiritual impression that the time had come for me to seek out a secluded hilltop on which to watch and pray for a few days and nights. Although I didn’t know it at the time, this is what our Chickamauga people refer to as “Going on a Hill” or sometimes as “Singing on a Mountain.” Afraid my parents would not understand, I had no idea how to accomplish this.

And so, Creator, being resourceful, took a different tack with me. At age 15, I began feeling what I could only interpret as a spiritual call to ministry. This confused me, since I had never really felt comfortable in church. I kept the call private. At the same time, I set myself to the task of thoroughly reading and studying the Bible while increasing my involvement in the church in which I was a member.

In the summer of 1983 I met Janet Tucker. I was a 24 year old college drop-out working without salary on my parents’ farm, teaching Sunday School and leading the singing at our church and singing with a Christian quartet. Also of Native ancestry, Janet lived on her family’s farm in the Hocking Hills of Ohio. We were pen-pals for a few months before she took initiative to travel to Missouri for a visit.

By the summer of 1985, Janet and I had been married for over a year. Living in what we called “the little house” on her family’s farm, Janet and I tended the sheep, and I did construction and oil field work. We were active members of a Southern Baptist church. Our first child, Peter had just been born. And, one evening, just at bedtime, I told Janet about my call to the ministry, adding that it was time for me to make the call public. Janet cried all night long.

During my years as a Baptist minister, I vacillated between privately following a strong spiritual leading toward Cherokee spiritual practices and recoiling for fear these were a compromise of my Christian beliefs or not reconcilable with the Bible. In December 1992, I was serving as pastor of Perkins Baptist Church in southeast Missouri while working toward a Master of Divinity at a branch-campus of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. That year, a young man suggested that for our Christmas Eve service, we wrap a large box with a fancy bow on top. On slips of paper, people would write down things they wanted removed from their lives: perceived sins or issues with which they were struggling. Before partaking of the bread and grape juice, the people would individually approach and drop their tightly folded slips of paper through a slot in the top of the brightly wrapped box. This would be our gift to Jesus. Afterward, the box would be taken outside the building and burned. Everyone liked the idea, and it was incorporated into the Christmas Eve service that year.

Approaching the box that night, I thought of my struggles with issues related to Cherokee spirituality. I was willing, if need be, to completely back off and leave those ways behind forever. On my slip of paper was a single word: IDOLATRY.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

As the box burned that night, we stood in awe. It was just a wrapped pasteboard box with maybe 50 or 60 small slips of paper inside, but multi-colored flames shot up, reaching heights of 20 feet or more and propelling showers of sparks which dispersed and blended into the starry sky.

That night marked a turning point in my life. Shortly after, Creator’s usual communication during my prayer times stopped, except for a still, small voice which said only “Meet me on Des Arc.” The summer of 1993 found me fasting and praying on the summit of that remote Ozark peak in the St. Francis Range, the second highest mountain in Missouri. I had no human being to put me on the mountain or take me off, but I had helpers, and Creator had much to say while I was there. A process began in me of stripping my idols away, one by one. But get this: My idolatry – my idols were not at all what I had imagined them to be. None of them had anything to do with Cherokee spirituality.

In January 1999, the first Indian Fellowship was born following a request made by Cherokee elders living in Joplin, Missouri and an offer to host the fellowship in their home. Before long, Mid American Indian Fellowships had grown into a network of American Indian spiritual groups in Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas.

In the spring of 2003, I took part in a Cherokee naming ceremony conducted by Uncle Richard Craker who lives near Monett, Missouri. Uncle Richard is a Traditional Chickamauga Cherokee Spiritual Helper. There is not a better known or more widely respected traditional spiritual helper in the State of Missouri than Uncle Richard.

I've known Uncle Richard for a long time, but up until a few months before the ceremony, I had never spoken to him about traditional naming. Now, here I was coming to this ceremony in which he would pronounce over me my soul name, the name that resides at the heart of my being. And I thought, "What would they say back at seminary?" Maybe someone would ask this question: "Why would you submit yourself to a traditional ceremony? Why would you submit yourself to a traditional holy man?

Then the thought came to me about a certain young man who lived long ago in a far-off country. Jesus' people were going down to the Jordan River to take part in a traditional Jewish purification ceremony, and Jesus went along. Jesus submitted himself to a traditional ceremony of his people. Jesus submitted himself to a traditional holy man of his people. I follow Jesus.

After the prayer sweat, the traditional piercing of ears, the ceremonial scratching and time of praying alone in the woods, each of those being named came in turn to stand in the naming circle. It was finally my turn to stand with Uncle Richard, to have my soul name announced to the seven directions and to the people of

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis the Seven Clans. As I heard the name, I began to weep, and much was washed away by those tears.

Although not technically a “Christian” organization, MAIF uses the slogan “following Jesus in the context of our Native cultures”. With Jesus’ life and teachings understood in the context of resistance to imperial colonization, MAIF’s organizational focus is on decolonization of previously Christianized American Indian people and restoration of indigenous cultures. The various Indian Fellowships meet independently but come together for an annual gathering in Linn County, Kansas.

Along with some of our offspring, Janet and I live on a small subsistence farm in Bates County, Missouri. That’s in the west-central part of the state. In large garden plots we raise indigenous heirloom crops: Old Tobacco, Cherokee corn varieties, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, etc. The family farm also serves as the site of the Daksi Grounds, a traditional Chickamauga Cherokee practice grounds established in the spring of 2010 with the coming of the Sacred Fire of the Cherokees. After serving a long apprenticeship at a Chickamauga Ceremonial grounds in South-Central Missouri, I was inducted into a traditional medicine society. And so, I serve as Fire Keeper and Head Ceremonialist for the Daksi Grounds. Chickamauga people gather at the Daksi Grounds from near and far to keep the six major, annual Chickamauga Cherokee ceremonies: New Fire, Blessing of the Seeds, Green Corn, Flint Corn, Great New Moon and Bounding Bush, as well as minor ceremonies: Prayer Sweats, Naming Ceremonies, Weddings, Baby Blessings and Traditional Adoptions.

The name “Daksi,” Cherokee for “Terrapin” or “Box Turtle” is in reference to the following story abbreviated from our oral tradition:

According to the old ones, Daksi or Terrapin was once a mighty warrior, much larger than he is today. There came a time when some vengeful wolves captured Terrapin and threw him off a high cliff into the river at a place where the water was low and the bottom just one big solid rock. Falling from the precipice, Terrapin reasoned this might be the day he would die. Splashing through the shallow water and crashing into the stone bottom of the river, Terrapin’s shell shattered. He lay there in great pain, his blood flowing down the river. He could have died there, but with the wolves watching from above, Terrapin painfully crawled up, out of the river, onto the low bank opposite the cliff. There he lay, still bleeding, still in pain, but Terrapin began to sing. “Gu-da ye-wu, Gu-da ye-wu. Gu-da ye-wu, gu-da ye-wu.” The English translation is, “I sew myself together.” As Terrapin continued to sing, the pieces of his shell began to come together. When Terrapin finished singing, he stood up, and with the wolves still watching, he walked away. Terrapin walked away much smaller and humbler than he had been before, and Terrapin will always

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

bear the scars. But, Terrapin is still Terrapin or Daksi, as we call him. He is still the one Creator made him to be.

Our language, our oral tradition, our ceremonies, our agriculture: These are the basic aspects of the culture Creator planted in us which kept us connected with Creator and with the land for many thousands of years. In these past few centuries, much of our God-given culture has been stripped away from us, leaving us naked, imbalanced and feeling like aliens and fugitives in our own country. In order to survive in the land, to avoid murder or removal, our ancestors scattered. And so, as a people, we are shattered, bleeding fragments of the people we once were.

Through Mid American Indian Fellowships, Creator is moving to bring our fragmented people back together and back into proper connection. We gather at the Daksi Grounds, to sing ourselves together again.

So, that’s how I got from there to here. And now, I will add this: To Christian people who want to help with decolonization and restoration of indigenous cultures, I say this: First be honest enough to lay aside all claims to exclusive ownership of ultimate truth, for such claims are bigoted and idolatrous and lead to violence, even to spiritual and cultural cannibalism. Look above you and around you and know that the good news of Creator is now and has always been everywhere heard and followed. Live out your own spirituality and do not interfere with others seeking to live out their own spiritualities, even if those spiritualities seem very different to you.

23. Do you regularly participate in worship with others?

I qualify my response by saying that there is nothing I do that could properly be called “worship” within the European American, European or Middle-Eastern understandings of that term. In keeping with Chickamauga Cherokee tradition, I give thanks, participate in ceremonies and ask for blessings. However, I do not consider that Creator/Apportioner wants me to prostrate myself or bow down to but rather to rise up and walk with the divine presence.

I regularly attend and help in several Indian Fellowships, most of which meet once each month. There is always some sort of purification or smudging or smoking-off ceremony. There is always a shared meal. We sit in a circle, whether outdoors or indoors. We use the drum and sing in our indigenous languages. The talking stick is passed, giving everyone the opportunity to say what Creator/Apportioner has laid on their hearts. Mid American Indian Fellowships also hosts an annual Gathering in Linn County, Kansas.

My family and I are members of the Morningstar Medicine Grounds, traditional Chickamauga grounds, in Ozark County, Missouri, where the Sacred Fire and major ceremonies are kept. In 2004, I was officially apprenticed by the

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

Morningstar Medicine Society. Our oldest son, Peter, was apprenticed sometime later. The ceremonies are kept at the Morningstar Grounds with no admixture of Christian practice.

Since 2000, my family has hosted Osi Ceremonies (sweats) at our place in Bates County, Missouri. In the spring of 2009, I was inducted as a full member of the Morningstar Medicine Society and given responsibility as Fire Keeper for the Daksi Grounds which would be started as a Traditional Chickamauga Cherokee Practice Grounds the following year. The Sacred Fire was brought to and reborn at the Daksi Grounds in the spring of 2010. The ceremonies are also kept at the Daksi Grounds with no admixture of Christian practice.

I attend Euro-American type churches when asked to come and speak. I continue in reciprocal relationship with some Baptists, namely the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Missouri, The Cooperating Baptist Fellowship of Oklahoma and several Cooperative Baptist Churches in Missouri. Having a broader view of the work of Jesus Christ, the CBF people help with the funding of Mid American Indian Fellowships. As I am asked, I speak in the churches and conduct American Indian cultural awareness and appreciation events and seminars. Mid American Indian Fellowships helps with CBF’s rural poverty initiative, Together for Hope (West), working together with people on South Dakota Indian reservations as they endeavor to lift themselves out of poverty. I have also worked some with Methodists in the Southeastern United States and the Marais des Cygnes Indian Fellowship has an annual joint-circle with the United Methodist Church in LaCygne, Kansas which I also attend.

24. Since you have Baptist supporters, is Mid American Indian Fellowships a Baptist organization?

No, Mid American Indian Fellowships is not Baptist. Although Mid American Indian Fellowships has reciprocal relationships with some Baptist churches and entities, this does not make MAIF Baptist any more than it makes the Baptists into members of the Mid American Indian Fellowships. Some MAIF members retain membership in Baptist churches, just as others continue as Methodist, Catholic, etc. MAIF members enjoy freedom of association. As for me, I was once a Baptist minister, I am no longer a member of a Baptist church or any other church. Mid American Indian Fellowships is not organized according to Baptist polity or in keeping with commonly held Baptist beliefs.

25. Why do you no longer attend church?

I never really felt at home in church, never really felt comfortable there. I remember hearing ministers in the pulpit say things like, “There is no place I’d rather be than here,” and thinking to myself, “I’d rather be almost anywhere else.” Naturally, I was surprised when Creator/Apportioner called me into the ministry.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

It took 10 years of prayerful consideration for me to be absolutely certain of that call. I tell people now, “Creator called me to the ministry in order to keep me in church long enough to get me out in a good way.”

Aside from that, if I were to continue as an active member of a church, the communication of that would be that the traditional ways Creator/Apportioner gave to our people are somehow not good enough or not complete. I don’t think Creator/Apportioner gives good and complete gifts to one people and inferior or incomplete gifts to others. Some traditional Indian people are also members of churches and attend church on a regular basis. If that’s what they want to do, or if that fulfils a felt need, more power to them. As for me, the traditional Chickamauga Cherokee ways are quite sufficient.

26. Would you say that you have incorporated Indian cultural expressions into your Christian worship?

Again, I must say that there is nothing I do that may properly be called “worship” much less “Christian worship.” Far from incorporating Cherokee cultural expressions into Christian worship, I maintain that I am a follower of Jesus and that Jesus has led me out the church door. I am not a Christian who is using Indian cultural expressions within my Christian worship. I am a traditional Chickamauga Cherokee who follows Jesus. Furthermore, I maintain that it is Jesus or, more properly, Creator-Offspring, who has led me to the path of being a traditional Chickamauga Cherokee.

27. You say you do not engage in Christian worship, but isn’t Mid American Indian Fellowships a Christian organization?

No, Mid American Indian Fellowships is not a Christian organization. While some Mid American Indian Fellowships members may describe themselves as Christian, others, including myself, reject that label along with the theological belief systems that go with it. Mid American Indian Fellowships is a network of American Indian spiritual groups in Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas. On the whole, Mid American Indian Fellowships does not look favorably upon Christian efforts to proselytize or convert those of other spiritual traditions.

28. Since Mid American Indian Fellowships is not a Christian organization, why do you continue to use or make reference to the Christian Bible?

This has been a point of confusion for many. After all, the Bible has been and continues to be used as a tool of colonization or as a weapon against our people and other indigenous peoples around the world. Through the use or misuse of the Bible, theologies of conquest are devised to encourage and justify the theft of lands and the genocide of nations.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

But, consider this: The enemy comes to you quietly saying, “Here is a terrible and deadly weapon. I have used this weapon to destroy your people, but try as I might, I can’t kill all of you. I need your help. I will now put this weapon in your hands. Take this and finish the destruction of your people and yourself as well. Finish the job that I have begun.”

 A fully colonized person may say, “Alright, I accept this weapon on the terms in which it is given. I will use it to destroy my people and myself as instructed.”

 Another person may say, “I reject any contact or connection with this weapon.”

 Still another may say, “I accept this weapon but on my own terms. I will become skilled with its use. I will help others who wish to become skilled with its use. We will then turn this weapon against our enemy, that our people may not be hurt by this weapon ever again!” This is why I continue to use the Bible.

29. Do you believe the Bible?

My understanding is that the Bible is a compilation of stories originally held sacred by Jews and early Christians of the Mediterranean region. Just as with the sacred stories of all cultures, the stories of the Bible, to greater and lesser extents, contain and reveal eternal truths. The Bible does not stand above or outside of culture. The Bible is itself a cultural artifact. While the Bible is clearly a sacred book, as with every other cultural artifact, the Bible’s origins are found in partnership between divine and human effort. Nothing touched by human hands is without flaw or error. I think most people would agree with this statement. I see no reason for believing the Christian Bible to be somehow exempt from this same rule. Human hands have not only touched the Bible, human hands have written the Bible, edited the Bible, copied the Bible and translated the Bible innumerable times. Even if I cannot consider the Bible to be infallible or inerrant, it remains to me a sacred book, having blessed my life, the lives of my family members and many of my ancestors for several generations. I know the Bible has been and remains a blessing to many.

30. Do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?

To begin with, I understand Creator/Apportioner has and continues to speak both directly and indirectly to all people in any number of ways.

I accept the contents of the Christian Bible to be, in large part, divinely inspired. However, I also understand that everything in the Bible was written by human beings, and the various writings found in the Bible are clearly not all on the same level of inspiration. While words of Creator may be found in the Bible, I find it

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis doubtful that every word in the Bible is from Creator. From my observations, some biblical writings seem to serve selfish or ethnocentric purposes. It even seems that some biblical writings exist expressly for the purpose of justifying atrocious behaviors. While I do believe that Creator may speak to and bring help to people through careful reading of the Bible, I must also acknowledge that great harm has been done in the earth through the application of some principles taught in the Bible.

31. If the Bible is not the inspired word of Creator in its entirety, how do you decide which parts to discard and which to keep? So, how do we determine which parts of the Bible, if any, are the absolute word of Creator?

There are many ways people may go about "Rightly dividing the word of truth" (1 Timothy 2:15). There are scholarly rules for the exegesis of scripture, such as examining the scripture in light of cultural, historical and literary contexts and comparing or contrasting passages of scripture with related passages. This requires much study. When religio-cultural blinders are removed, Bible scholars discover that for every “truth” laid out in scripture, there is an opposite or contradictory “truth” laid out. One may, of course, apply the rule of love, but there are those who’s understanding of love is distorted, yielding a love devoid of respect which is no love at all.

It is my opinion that for indigenous people, an intimate acquaintance with one’s own tribal oral traditions gives one an excellent tool for perusing and pondering the Christian scriptures with which indigenous people are repeatedly attacked.

Here is something else to consider. Didn’t Jesus say, “The Kingdom of heaven is within you”? It would have been nice if he could have had a better metaphor than “kingdom” to use, but maybe, just maybe, we should look to the heart of hearts for the ultimate word of truth rather than to books imported from other cultures.

32. Do you believe the Bible to be necessary and sufficient for salvation?

My understanding is that salvation: balance, wholeness, health and healing is of Creator/Apportioner. Creator is the Everywhere-Spirit, not confined to any one people’s holy text or set of sacred stories. The healing or balancing principles and understandings conveyed in the Bible were with the indigenous peoples of this land long before any of us had association with the book. Also, the Bible, or any sacred text or set of sacred stories, is sufficient for salvation only as read or heard in the context of seeking balance in ones life and living life in harmony with all creation. It is not in the hearing, but in the doing, that healing, health, wholeness and balance may be found.

33. Don’t you believe American Indians are better off by having the Bible?

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

My understanding is that we are better off following Creator according to the original instructions: the sacred stories, ceremonies, ethics and lifeways given to our people before we ever had the Bible. My understanding is that these instructions and the harmonious relationship we always enjoyed with Creator and with creation were and are sufficient. We were better off as uncolonized peoples. It would have been good if the Bible had come to us in a better way, without the horrendous violence and from a people willing to listen before speaking, in accordance with proper etiquette. However, we are taught to listen and consider, taking all in our hand, to pick out the good, to blow the rest away with the breath of kindness. The Bible is now in our hands, and it’s up to us to decide what to do with it. We may decide to reject it, or we may decide to accept it. We have this freedom of choice. If we decide to accept the Bible, we must accept it on Indian terms, in keeping with the original instructions given to us by Creator. Nothing supersedes those instructions. If we take the Bible, we must read it with Indian eyes. To do otherwise puts us in violation of the very principles the Bible conveys. Who knows? It may well be that a thorough and healthy understanding of what the Bible really says could protect our peoples from those who continue using the book as a genocidal weapon against us.

34. Can you biblically support your return to traditional cultural ways?

Jesus was born a Jew and remained a Jew. As far as I can see from reading the Gospels, he never became a Christian. I don’t say this to be trite; I say this to make an important point. Some years ago, I approached Uncle Richard Craker and asked if he would consider naming me. Uncle Richard named people in the old way. As I was approaching the site of the ceremony, I asked myself, “What would they say back at the seminary? They would say, ‘Why are you going to a fully traditional ceremony of the Chickamauga Cherokee People? Why are you submitting yourself to a fully traditional Chickamauga Cherokee holy man?’” And then I thought, “How would I answer them? ‘There was a certain carpenter who lived in Palestine more than 2,000 years ago. One day he laid down his carpenter’s tools and walked 80 miles to attend a traditional ceremony of his people and to submit himself to a traditional holy man of his people. That man was Jesus. I follow Jesus.’”

Decolonization is a major theme of the Bible. The Old Testament deals with decolonization from the Egyptian and Chaldean empires. The New Testament deals with decolonization from Greco-Roman imperialism even as it warns against other forms of colonization.

I believe that all or nearly all the healing stories and exorcism stories of the Gospels are, in reality, stories of decolonization. I think the early church understood the stories in this way, but as the church became friendly to imperial interests and as Christianity was reduced in many cases to a tool or weapon of imperial colonization, the decolonization stories or narratives were reinterpreted

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis to conform to a non-threatening, dualistic religious formula in which the spiritual and the physical or political realms are artificially divorced one from the other.

Declaring the purpose and scope of his own ministry, Jesus read from the Prophet Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor - Luke 4:18-19

This is a powerful statement of decolonization.

In identifying a host of evil spirits with the name “Legion” (Mark 5:9; Luke 8:30), Gospel writers draw a parallel between colonization and demonic possession, showing Jesus as the great decolonizer.

Many would agree with me that one of the high points of the Christian Bible is the passage commonly called “The Lord’s Prayer.” I like to call it the model prayer.

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…. - Matthew 6:9-13 K.J.V.

I quote it here from the King James Version of the Bible, because that’s how I learned it. I’ve left off the flowery ending of the prayer: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, Amen.” This ending is not found in any of the earlier biblical manuscripts and was probably added to the text at a much later date.

Here’s my own paraphrase of the model prayer Jesus used to teach his followers. It’s based on my own painfully slow study of the deep meanings in the Greek text that may be lost through translation into English:

Our Father above, take action that your name, your authority, your character, your nature will be understood as set apart and above. Put your rule or order in place here, that what you want done will be done in earth just as in the realms above. Give us today what we need to live through the day. And forgive us for what we owe even as we forgive those who owe us and are delinquent in repayment. Do not lead us to trial but save us from that or those of an essentially evil or hurtful character.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

The first thing that should jump out at us about Jesus’ model prayer is that it is not an individualistic prayer. There is no plea here for individual favors or even for personal salvation. The words “my” and “me” and “I” are noticeably absent, replaced by “our” and “us” and “we.” The model prayer is a prayer for decolonization for the people and for the whole earth.

The theme of decolonization continues throughout the New Testament. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul basically says that pressuring or manipulating others to be absorbed from one culture into another, amounts to cultural cannibalism. It is the opposite of loving your neighbor as yourself (Galatians 5:1-15). The book of Acts and the Revelation of John promote the truth that each nation (ethnicity) is valued by Creator, along with the cultures that make each one unique. (Acts 10:15, 34-35; Revelation 7:9-10; 22:2).

To the religious people of his day, Jesus said, “You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are” (Matthew 23:15b). Christian missionaries have focused primarily on Matthew 28:18-20, commonly known as the “Great Commission,” in which the risen Christ instructs his followers to make disciples of all nations. There is often a refusal to see how careful Jesus was even in his own cross- cultural encounters. For instance, after Jesus cleansed the Gerasene man from the Legion of demons, the man begged to go with Jesus. Jesus refused this request, sending the man back to his family to tell them how much Creator had done for him. For Jesus to allow the man to come along with him and his followers would have necessitated a change of culture, specifically a conversion to Judaism. Jesus was not willing for this to happen (Mark 5:18-19; Luke 8:38- 39). Selective reading of the gospels allows Christian missionaries to neglect Creator-Offspring’s primary work of decolonization. Furthermore, ignoring the warnings of Jesus, Christian missionaries actively work towards the colonization of indigenous peoples, making twice-born “sons of hell” wherever they go.

Decolonization must, of necessity, include the promotion and restoration of indigenous cultures, especially that which is understood as original instructions given by Creator to a people. A house swept clean but left unoccupied is an invitation for disaster. In the Bible, Jesus explains what happens when bad spirits are expelled, but the Holy Spirit is not invited in:

“When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first….” - Matthew 12:43-45

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

Jesus purposed to free his people from the effects of outside imperialistic forces through the restoration of the damaged spirituality of his people. As a follower of Jesus, I espouse the same purpose among my own people.

35. Do you think there may someday be a Native American Bible put together from the various writings or books that are considered spiritually important to Native Americans?

I certainly hope not! We already have one Bible and hardly know what to do with it. While many writings by American Indian authors have become spiritually important within various American Indian communities, as far as I can see, to sort through and compile a canon of selected writings would serve no other purpose than to limit and control. We do not need that!

Actually, various departments of corrections around the country have put together what might be practically termed “Indian Bibles”. After the pattern set by the Roman Empire in calling the Council of Nicea, departments of corrections have brought together hand-picked Indians and “Indian experts” who, working within department of corrections parameters, have patched together generic/eclectic Native American or Pan-Indian spiritual programs. Once written down, such programs become approved or orthodox practice for prisons and woe to any who attempt to go against the sacred writ.

36. What is meant by the Mid American Indian Fellowships statement “following Jesus within the context of our Native cultures”?

In all honesty, this statement means different things to different people even within our Indian Fellowships circles. That being said, I’ll try to explain what this statement means to me.

I once listened as a highly esteemed Chickamauga Cherokee traditional elder explained that the life of Jesus as described in the Bible, the life of one going about healing diseases, casting out hurtful spirits, teaching people to live in harmony, bears more resemblance to the life of a traditional American Indian spiritual person than it does to the average Christian minister.

I no longer call myself a Christian. I do not ascribe to any Christian creed or statement of faith. However, I do consider myself a follower of Jesus which to me means this: I look at this Jesus, the things he did and said in the context of his situation and take his life as an example for my situation, keeping in mind that while our situations have similarities, there are also radical differences. I am a Chickamauga Cherokee follower of Jesus. Our ancient Chickamauga Cherokee understandings of Creator-Offspring are big enough to include Jesus, even if the understandings of Jesus held by many Christians are too small to include or even tolerate those outside their tight little circles.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

I’ll say it again: Jesus was born a Jew and remained a Jew. Jesus never became a Christian! Jesus was willing to help those of other ethnicities but never attempted to convert them. As indigenous peoples of the Americas, we have our own cultures. We are neither Jews nor Hebrews. We are not Asians, Europeans or Africans, but our cultures are no less blessed, no less chosen than any other. To follow Jesus in the context of our Native cultures means valuing the presence and teachings of Creator within our own Native cultures; it means being true to our own Native cultures even as Jesus was true to his.

37. Isn’t it semantically dishonest to make the assertion "Jesus never became a Christian,” since Christian literally means "follower of Christ"?

If we can see the word “Christ” in its original sense, not as the name of a person or even as a title but as the blessing of, imaging of, and uniting of Creator in creation, and if we then take the word “Christian” in its original sense as a “follower of Christ,” then I would say, yes, Jesus was indeed a Christian, as surely as he was following that blessing way. But, here’s the funny thing about words. A word may start out with a certain meaning, but later, other meanings may attach themselves to a word. Take the Cherokee name Sequoya. Semantically, Sequoya is a Cherokee word that simply means, I think, “Pig in a Pen.” That’s not a bad name; a pig in a pen is a wonderful asset for a family, a promise of good things to come. However, due to that name being born by one particular person who spent his life in efforts to unite his people who had scattered all the way from North Carolina to Mexico, that name has taken on new meaning and significance. Today, few people simply think of a pig in a pen when they hear the name Sequoya.

Mahatma Gandhi called himself a follower of Jesus. Indeed, Gandhi put the teachings of Jesus, especially the “Sermon on the Mount,” into practical use, leading his people to freedom through the application of peaceful civil disobedience to a colonizing power. I see Mahatma Gandhi as a true follower of Jesus, but Mahatma Gandhi was not a Christian. He was a Hindu. The colonizers he was resisting were Christians. I refer to myself as a follower of Jesus and endeavor to put the teachings and example of Jesus into practical use in my own life. However, just as Gandhi was not a Christian, neither am I. I am a traditional Chickamauga Cherokee.

I know what the word “Christian” means semantically, but what other meanings has this word taken on over the years? Why would a man like Gandhi, who was indeed a follower of Jesus, shrink from using the word “Christian” in self- designation? Why would a person like me not call himself a Christian and not want to be called a Christian? Why do many people, not just me, look at Jesus’ life and teachings and make the observation that Jesus never did become a Christian?

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

38. Does Mid American Indian Fellowships share the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, as I understand it, is very simply the good news that Creator loves and gives himself for creation. Each people is loved, even if at times, as when colonizing powers hold sway, it seems our peoples are abandoned. According to the Christian Bible, this good news is already known by all peoples, having gone out from the beginning (Romans 10:17-18). That’s the good news of which Jesus reminded his own Jewish people. That's also the good news Jesus demonstrated as he healed the Gerasenes on the other side of the lake, and there is no record of his ever preaching them a sermon (Mark 5:1- 20; 6:53-56).

Again, the good news, as lived and spoken by Jesus, is that Creator hears the cry of the oppressed, that empires will come to an end and that balance will be restored. Jesus was crucified in reaction to his active resistance to the empire. The protest Jesus led in the Roman-controlled Jewish Temple led directly and swiftly to his execution. As he faced death, Jesus’ hope, as I understand it, was not for people to kneel at the foot of his cross throughout the ages, but rather, that people would follow his example of returning to the indigenous connection (atonement / at-one-ment) with their own People, the Land (Earth) and Creator, that they would courageously thumb their noses at the empire and at those claiming religious authority over them not by the power of Creator but by the malignant power of empire, that they would do this even though it would certainly mean taking up their own crosses, following Jesus to the death and literally storming the gates of hell (the grave) through mass executions. Through the process of decolonization and indigenous cultural restoration, Mid American Indian Fellowships is living out this good news of Creator’s love for creation.

Too often, there is an assumption that indigenous people have no knowledge of or relationship with Creator. So, “sharing the Gospel” becomes code for giving a people spirituality as if they don’t already have one or attempting to complete a people’s spirituality as if it is not already sufficient as it is. It is saying, “Your people have all been going to hell until now, but if you only believe and follow everything we tell you, you can go to heaven.” This is not “good news.” It is spiritual manipulation. It is yet another act of cultural violence or colonization.

39. What is the moment like when an Indian accepts Christ and becomes a Christian?

It's hard for me to even understand this question anymore. What “Christ” are we talking about? Are we talking about the narrow, contrived Christ of fundamentalist Christians of the United States? Or, are we talking about The Eternal One, the Unetlvnvhi-Uweji (Creator-Offspring) who shines as the Morning Star, falls to Earth as the Shooting Star and indwells every creature, every part and aspect of creation, who is the lamb/deer/bear/buffalo/salmon/whale/seal slain from the

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis foundation of the earth and every child born among the people, whose good news has gone out to the ends of the earth from the beginning, sung and proclaimed by every star, every good spirit, every animal, bird, plant, tree and rock? There are many who say they know Christ. If you want to find the ones who are known by Christ (which is more important according to the Christian Bible - Matthew 7:21-23) watch for how they love one another. Watch for how they love all the relations, every aspect of his very-good creation. They may or may not call themselves Christian. The moment or the day or the month or the year or the lifetime in which a person accepts the one who is identified in the Bible as “Christ,” is that sacred time when the person humbly says in her/his heart "Creator, you're so big, and we're so small. Have pity on us” and awakens to the knowledge that she/he is not so small after all, being an integral aspect of the entirety of the universe.

40. Is Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior?

Jesus is my friend. Isn’t that how Jesus sought to relate to those who walked with him more than 2,000 years ago? (John 15:15). A lord has servants or slaves; a friend has friends.

41. What does the Cross mean to you?

I have been asked this question more than once by Christian people. To indigenous peoples of many tribes in North America, the four directions are represented by a cross, with the center of that cross being the place where we are, the place where Creator meets with us. For others, the place where the two paths meet is represented by a cross. Of course, I realize that when Christians ask, “What does the Cross mean to you?” They are referring specifically to the cross upon which Jesus died or, more precisely, to the act of Jesus’ crucifixion.

What the common people of first-century Palestine considered Messianic hope, the Roman conquerors and occupiers considered insurrection, and the Romans had ways, actually one preferred way, of dealing with insurrectionists. The English word “cross” derives, after all, from the Latin “cruciere”: meaning to torture to death.

After Jesus’ crucifixion, his followers sought to make sense of what had happened. Their leader had been put to death by those in power, in a most ignoble way, as an insurrectionist. The logic of the time was that good men simply do not die on crosses. Why had God allowed Jesus to die in this way? What did this mean? Over the years, many Christians began to believe that, in some way, Jesus’ tortuous death was necessary for achieving atonement between God the Creator and human beings. Within a little over a hundred years, theories attempting to explain the necessity of the crucifixion of Jesus in achieving atonement with God began to surface. Most of the atonement theories that developed over the following centuries and millennia tend to center on what

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis might be called the “vicarious punishment” of Jesus for the sins of all humanity. Some theories view Jesus’ death as buying off or placating the wrath of God. Others view Jesus’ death as payment to the devil. In all theories of “vicarious punishment” or “vicarious atonement” as it is more often called, an economic transaction is understood to take place. The sins of all humanity are placed upon and punished in Jesus while the righteousness of Jesus is miraculously or magically conferred upon all who make proper confession, following Jesus in baptism and placing themselves under the authority of the church.

All things considered, what the cross means or does not mean to me is of scant importance. What did the cross mean to Jesus? That is the more pertinent question.

I see a tendency exhibited by many Christians to look at the cross as something borne and suffered only by Jesus. The attitude is, “Jesus paid the price so I don’t have to” or “Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice; no further sacrifice is needed.” The cross is viewed as something one kneels before. However, by looking at these texts: Matthew 16:15-28; Mark 8:29-9:1; Luke 9:20-27 one may see that Jesus himself viewed the cross much differently.

Jesus did not call his followers to kneel before his cross but rather to take up their own cross and follow. In the Roman Empire of the era in which Jesus lived, the mention of a cross, or of carrying a cross, evoked no sentimentality. Jesus, along with all those to whom he spoke had witnessed the awful reality of public crucifixion. People who took up crosses were those about to be crucified, and those who were crucified were those who had resisted the authority of the malignant power structure – the empire – along with whatever puppet regimes the empire put in place, such as the Jewish temple authorities in Jerusalem.

Jesus was saying that to have life one must be willing to risk everything and make of oneself a willing sacrifice. One must resist the controlling authority which calls itself divine but is not – being of human or possibly even of demonic origin. Jesus calls his followers to resist this authority in spite of threats of torment, willing to suffer hell itself for those who are loved.

42. If Jesus is not the way, the truth and the life, why should anyone bother indigenous cultures with his gospel?

I actually don’t argue against Jesus as The Way, The Truth and The Life. Jesus of Nazareth certainly embodied all of this for his disciples. At the same time, as I read the gospel accounts, I see Jesus attempting to convey the central truth that The Way, The Truth and the Life was also embodied by his listeners, by each little child, by the sparrow and the mustard seed. Jesus aptly painted a word picture of Creator embodied by each and every aspect of creation. Some understood. Some woefully misunderstood. The way I have come to see it, so long as Christians hold fast to the claim of exclusive possession of ultimate truth,

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis they really have nothing worth sharing with anyone. Once their eyes are open, once they become aware of the foul and malicious nature of the exclusive truth claim which has heretofore kept those who hold to it from true communion with and in The Way, The Truth and the Life, then they will have much to share.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, as I understand it, is very simply the good news that Creator loves and is self-sacrificing on the part of creation. Each people is loved, even if at times, as when colonizing powers hold sway, it seems our peoples are abandoned. According to the Christian Bible, this good news is already known by all peoples, having gone out from the beginning (Romans 10:17-18). That’s the good news of which Jesus reminded his own Jewish people. That's also the good news Jesus demonstrated as he healed the Gerasenes on the other side of the lake, and there is no record of his ever preaching them a sermon (Mark 5:1- 20; 6:53-56).

But, the good news of Jesus was captured by the very empire that crucified him. The gospel of Jesus was effectively hung up by its heels and castrated, made a mule or tool or weapon of the empire, promising pie in the sky salvation for all who would give assent to the empire and the imperially controlled or sanctioned Church and the fear of hell fire to all who would stand in rebellion.

The thing is; I have found that there are many Christians who are taking a fresh look at the actual teachings of Jesus, stripped of imperialistic interpretations. I find this in some of what is being called “The Emergent Church” as well as in what is termed “The Postcolonial Movement.”

From time to time, I encounter those who seem to be under the false impression that one of the purposes of Mid American Indian Fellowships is the evangelization of non-Christian, American Indian traditionals. This could not be further from the truth, as we are actually operating in the opposite direction. Mid American Indian Fellowships may be considered as a bridge for typically

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis colonized and Christianized Indian people who feel a spiritual leading to reconnect with the traditional spiritualities of their own people.

43. If God will judge those who never heard the Christian gospel according to the natural or cultural law that they lived under, why bother preaching the gospel to them at all? Aren’t missionaries diminishing their opportunity for "getting into heaven" by introducing a completely different standard by which they are to be judged (acceptance of Jesus as savior)?

This question assumes that I imagine the Creator of the universe as a celestial judge. I do not. Aside from the erroneous assumption, this is a good question. Maybe, just maybe, this has something to do with why Jesus included crossing land and sea to make proselytes among his “Seven Woes.” After 500+ years, what are the fruits of proselytizing Christian missions in American Indian communities? Has life become more abundant for American Indians as a result of Christian proselytism, or have conditions grown much worse? Jesus said, “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16). The tangible, observable fruits of Christian proselytism in American Indian communities include spiritual dependency and subjugation based in fear, gender role confusion, factionalism, dilution of cultural knowledge, identity confusion, depression and resultant self- destructive behaviors.

44. If Jesus of Nazareth is not unique and exclusive as the Son of God, why would his gospel have any value to any indigenous culture other than his own? If Jesus does not offer something unique and exclusive to all cultures, why would anyone want to be a "Cherokee follower of Jesus"? Unless "follower" is watered down to the level of a devotee, and Jesus was just a great teacher who said some good things worth considering and living by?

I’ve probably written this before, but the term Unetlvnvhi-Uwegi “Creator- Offspring or Creator/Apportioner-Offspring” is of very ancient usage among Cherokees. Unetlvnvhi-Uwegi, child of the Sun and Moon, is the third of what we call The Elder Fires Above. This is the Morning and Evening Star: the star that shines brightest when the night is darkest and when all other stars have faded, the star that shines not with its own light but with the light of the Sun. Unetlvnvhi- Uwegi comes to Earth as the Shooting Star. White Otter is Unetlvnvhi-Uwegi, and when one of the people dies, that one is encouraged to keep his/her eyes on White Otter as he will guide in a straight path across the Great River and on to the place of the blessed spirits. But, every child born is also Unetlvnvhi-Uwegi. We are reminded of this each time the ancient Baby Blessing, as kept by the Chickamauga Cherokees, is given. “I am the Morning Star!” the spiritual helper declares, speaking on behalf of the child.

All of Creation truly is Creator-Offspring, but there is an allowance that, from time to time, one will come among the people who is more aware or more in touch

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis with the Attender or Awareness that lies within the heart of hearts of all persons. We recognize that such ones have been and will continue to be born among our own people and among all peoples. As I think I have said before, Unetlvnvhi- Uwegi is an inclusive concept, and so, when missionaries spoke of Jesus as being the Son of God, he was understood as Unetlvnvhi-Uwegi or Creator/Apportioner-Offspring.

The good news of Jesus (not the castrated pie-in-the-sky-heaven-to-gain-hell-to- shun good news, but the real good news of Creator’s love for creation and of Creator’s concern for the oppressed and the bringing of balance to all creation) is already present within every indigenous culture. It is there in the stories, the ceremonies, the agriculture, the wording of the languages. But now we have this story of Jesus, a Jewish man who lived 2,000 years ago in a particularly tortured corner of the Earth. Most of us grew up with this story. Many of us have been blessed by this story; have found inspiration in this story, even if this story has been brought to us as part of a malicious system of control based in fearful superstition. So, what are we to do with this story? Some choose to reject the story outright. Some choose to accept the story along with the religious teachings or superstitions with which it arrived. Some choose to sift the story, according to its own internal evidence and also according to the spirituality of their own people. This last is what I choose. As I have written before, I do consider myself a follower of Jesus which to me means this: I look at this Jesus, the things he did and said in the context of his situation and take his life as an example (not THE example but an example) for my situation, keeping in mind that while our situations have similarities, there are also radical differences. Jesus was born a Jew and remained a Jew. Jesus never became a Christian! Jesus was willing to help those of other ethnicities but never attempted to convert them. As indigenous peoples of the Americas, we have our own cultures. We are neither Jews nor Hebrews. We are not Asians, Europeans or Africans, but our cultures are no less blessed, no less chosen than any other. To follow Jesus in the context of our Native cultures means valuing the presence and teachings of Creator within our own Native cultures; it means being true to our own Native cultures even as Jesus was true to his.

By no means do I see what I do as a “watered down” following of Jesus. I do my best to be true to the teachings of Jesus as I understand them, even if this means a refutation of nearly 2,000 years of imperialistic Christian dogma.

45. It is said that Jesus was either THE Son of God or he was a madman; there is no middle ground. Jesus is either relevant to all peoples for all time or completely irrelevant. How would you respond to this?

As a traditional Fire Keeper, I am in direct contact with the Sacred Fire of the Chickamauga Cherokees every day, all the time. I have seen or experienced many signs and wonders confirming that this is indeed THE Sacred Fire. I've never asked for any such sign, but the signs are given and continue to be

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis given. There are other groups of Cherokees who are bringing back the old ceremonies for the people where they are. They may not be keeping the Fire exactly as we are. I am not sure whether or not the Fire any of these groups keep has the same ancient lineage as the Fire we keep. There are Cherokees who are keeping the Fire that they got from the Muscogee Creeks. They lost the Fire, you see, and rather than coming to the Chickamauga Cherokees in Arkansas or Missouri, they went to the Creeks. Now, either the Sacred Fire kept at the Morningstar Grounds and at the Daksi Grounds in Missouri is THE Sacred Fire, or we who gather around that Fire are all mad. So, what about these other Fires? I might be tempted to say that since we have THE Sacred Fire, whatever these others have cannot be THE Sacred Fire. However, for me to say or even to think such a thing would be to limit, in my mind and heart, the Creator/Apportioner – the very Life of the Entire Universe, to one small spark of that life that I can see and feel in front of me. I would be like a man ordering pie in a restaurant, and when the slice of pie is served, I tell myself that this is THE Entire Pie and no one else in the room can possibly have Pie unless I give them some of mine! Think about this and how disrespectful it is for some few swelled- headed theologians and Christian fiction writers to presume to limit how others may understand Jesus!

46. You have made statements to the effect that Christianity’s exclusive claim to truth inevitably leads to violence and should be laid aside. Isn’t your objection to the exclusive truth claim simply another exclusive truth claim?

This is very similar to arguing that an objection to intolerance is itself intolerance or that policies enacted to undo the imbalance of white racism are, in effect, racist toward white people. Yes, I have made statements such as,  The exclusive and universal claim to truth is the family pet that devours the family.  The exclusive claim to ultimate truth may be the greatest of all lies. I fail to understand how such statements about the exclusive truth claim can be seen as being anything like another exclusive truth claim. I make no exclusive claims to truth. Truth is like lightning that flashes across the sky or the wind that blows as it will. No one person and no group of persons, no matter how large or powerful, may lay claim of ownership to universal truth. Any truth that is universal or universally applicable is also universally communicated by Creator in creation and obvious to all with eyes to see and ears to hear.

47. Without absolutes, anything goes, yet you do not accept any exclusive truth claims, not from the Bible or even from your own oral traditions. So, from where do you draw your absolutes?

From where do I draw my absolutes? Well, mostly I just listen to my insurance agent. Whenever he says I need more coverage, by God, I buy more coverage. I figure he knows best. After all, he's got all those fancy books and statistics. And,

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis who doesn't believe the insurance agent? And then there's my doctor. Certainly everything he says is absolute; he's a doctor, for heaven's sake! If he says I need a test or special examination or procedure, that's enough for me. And, of course, there’s Fox News. I'd be a fool not to believe everything said on Fox News is absolute truth. I hope you know I’m not being serious.

This question about absolutes links absolute truth with exclusive truth claims. In my mind, they are not the same. To my way of thinking, an absolute truth will be readily and easily observable and accessible to all people, of all time. For instance: Woman is the savior of mankind and Man is the savior of womankind, since it takes both to bring about the next generation in the Earth. Or this: We all need air, shelter, water and food in order to live in the Earth. Or this: Our bodies are entirely of the Earth and return to the Earth, and the energy of the Earth is provided by the Sun. These are absolutes. Sacred stories may point to absolute truths, but any truth that is exclusively ownable, by any person or group, is not absolute, it is rather, a peripheral truth which people have taken for absolute and so have made into a superstition or even an idol.

The following excerpt from my paper "Gods and Idols" speaks to this issue. I say "ultimate" here instead of "absolute", but I think the terms are interchangeable.

The claim to exclusive possession of ultimate truth may be the greatest of all lies. Those making the exclusive truth claim have access to ultimate truth, as all do, ultimate truth being everywhere. Even so, the exclusive truth claim clouds the truth or eclipses the truth from the eyes of those who make the claim. The exclusive truth claim, or the one who makes the exclusive truth claim, seeks to use the truth for its own ends, its own glorification or aggrandizement. Even so, those making the exclusive truth claim cannot see ultimate truth, their eyes being clouded as they are. In actuality, the exclusive truth claim does not and cannot focus on ultimate truth at all but only on an image of the truth, mistaking the image of the truth for ultimate truth itself. By mistaking the image of the truth for truth itself, the exclusive truth claim makes the image into an idol. An idol may be owned and must be protected, hence the tenaciously protective claim of exclusive possession of ultimate truth. However, in reality, ultimate truth may not be owned by any person or group, no matter how large or well organized, and ultimate truth needs no protection.

Where do I look for absolute truth? In all seven directions.

48. Do you believe that all gods of different religions are the same god just with different names?

There is Deity and there is what people say about Deity. What people say about Deity is, by definition, theology. There are many theologies. Many things are

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis said about Deity. There are private theologies and group theologies. A serious problem arises when human beings become enamored of their own theology or of their group’s theology to the extent that they mistake their theology for the unlimited and transcendent reality of Deity – that Great Mystery which no amount of theology may define. Many such idols have been and are imaged or constructed in the minds of human beings.

I have never heard traditional Indian people from two different tribes or cultures sitting down and asking each other questions like “To what God do you pray?” or even “What do you believe?” Instead, one may say something like “This is what we do…” And then, that one may patiently wait to see whether the other will reciprocate by telling a little about what his or her people do.

49. Would you say that all paths lead to Creator?

Where is Creator? The statement “All paths lead to Creator” presupposes that Creator is somewhere else. It may be better to ask whether all paths are of Creator or whether all paths are good. I would not say that all paths are good paths. I would like to think so, but seemingly, there are some really bad, really violent, fearful, selfish and exploitive paths out there that people are following. At the same time, who can see anyone else’s path, or even ones own path in its entirety. In looking around me, I can see that Creator loves variety. It follows that there would be the widest possible variety of good paths. If a path works for someone, making life courageous, abundant and joyful, and is respectful and loving, lived for the people, characterized by light footprints rather than by violence and exploitation, it must be a good path.

50. Is Mid American Indian Fellowships part of the “contextual ministry” movement?

Although “contextual ministry” is definitely a catch phrase, I am not completely convinced there is such a thing as a “contextual ministry movement.” There are many American Indian ministries that refer to themselves as “contextual” or as “contextualized within the cultures of the people.” However, I am not sure that what all of these do is really contextual. Most are under the auspices of one or another of a multitude of European-American dominated Christian denominations, which means they are under obligation to stay within the parameters of proscribed theological perspectives and church polities. On occasion, I have observed the taking of isolated Indian cultural elements out of their cultural context and transplanting these into a church culture. Cultural distortion occurs as Christian meaning is superimposed. This begins with Bible translation. Meanings of words in most American Indian languages have been purposely distorted by biblical translators. It continues now as the drum, feathers and regalia, cedar and sage are incorporated into a basically European theology and worship tradition. In many cases, the isolated cultural elements are used as bait to draw people out of their own cultures or to prevent people from returning

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis to their cultures and engaging in the rebuilding of their own indigenous communities.

Mid American Indian Fellowships works with the understanding that Creator is already present in and enfleshed by each and every indigenous culture and community. Indeed, Creator is present in and enfleshed by all creation. Mid American Indian Fellowships may be considered as a bridge for typically colonized and Christianized Indian people who feel a spiritual leading to reconnect with the traditional spiritualities of their own people.

51. Exactly how traditional are the Mid American Indian Fellowships people?

The Mid American Indian Fellowships are a continuum of everything from Christians who hold appreciation for and practice some indigenous traditions to traditional tribal people who hold appreciation for the teachings of Jesus but are in no wise Christian. Personally, I fall into the later category. As a group, we are inclusive rather than exclusive and tend to hold exclusive religious tendencies and actions in highest contempt.

52. Can traditional spiritual practices be put alongside of Christian belief without conflict?

Several years ago, I was invited to speak in a chapel service at Fort Leonard Wood, a U.S. Army base in central Missouri. After speaking to a standing-room only crowd on that November Sunday, I found myself enjoying brunch while conversing with a sergeant stationed on the base, a man who described himself as a traditional person, of a tribe located in Arizona. The man spoke to me of his mother-in-law (ex-mother-in-law really) who was of a tribe with a reservation located in Montana. He said, “Traditionally, in my tribe, a son-in-law does not speak to his mother-in-law, but I never held with that tradition. To tell the truth, I always got along better with my mother-in-law than I did with her daughter. Even after the divorce, I still talk with her. Every time I go to Montana to visit my kids, I always go to visit my mother-in-law. She is very much a traditional [of her tribe], but she is also a very devout Christian: a Roman Catholic. I asked her once how she could reconcile the two: being a traditional Indian and also accepting and being part of the religion of those who did everything they could to wipe all Indians from the face of the earth. She was quiet awhile before answering, and then, all she said was, ‘I pray a lot.’”

I considered asking the man how he himself could reconcile being a traditional of his tribe with being a member of the United States military, but I refrained. Sitting there with him, the feeling I had was, this is also a person who prays a lot.

I will say first that I recognize important similarities between the two ways; both understand that Creator loves us. Even so, I see many Christian beliefs as

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis standing in conflict with indigenous practices. I have outlined some of these differences below.

Contrast of Ways Cherokee Christian Creator is understood as completely 1. Creator is understood as separate indwelling or embodied by all from Creation, entering Creation in Creation. Creator and Creation are limited ways: (a) Chosen People (b) in unity Sacred Texts (c) Jesus Christ (d) The Church. The focus is on practice – how life is 2. The focus is on belief – intellectual lived in relationship or community assent to doctrines or formularies The focus is on restoration of 3. The focus is on sin and redemption harmony and balance for the People for the individual person and all of Creation. Creation is understood as essentially 4. Creation is understood as fallen and good. unworthy Creation is seen as being centered 5. Creator is imagined as being on Creator. centered on the Church or Christian religion. Creator and Creation are understood 6. Creator is understood as holding as being in partnership. dominion or being like a king. The place of origin or the “holy land” 7. The place of origin or “holy land” is is in North America. in the Middle East. Humans are understood as 8. Humans are understood as superior intricately connected to and to and separable from the rest of inseparable from the rest of Creation. Creation. The Earth is understood as a living 9. The earth is understood as inert being of which human beings are but matter or inanimate resources one aspect. entrusted to human dominion. Truth is seen as universally 10. An exclusive truth claim is made. accessible. Diversity is valued. It is understood 11. Diversity is devalued. It is believed that each People should relate to that all people should follow the Creator and Creation according to Christian religion. the original instructions given by Creator to that People. It is understood that while Creator 12. It is believed that what the Bible and communicates in innumerable ways Christian doctrines say about and with all Peoples, Creator Creator is the ultimate truth of remains the Great Mystery Creator for all people.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

This is by no means a complete or exhaustive list. Also, please be advised, this outline consists of lists of generalizations. They may be true in general but not necessarily in each and every case. For instance, I personally know Christians who have effectively rid themselves of Christian claims to exclusive ownership of ultimate truth.

While I am a traditional Cherokee, I also call myself a follower of Jesus. This confuses some people. Some think this means I am a Christian. But, here’s the rub: A person may place high value on the stories of Jesus, even to the extent of calling himself or herself a “follower of Jesus” and at the same time not accept all the teachings of Christianity. Mahatma Gandhi called himself a follower of Jesus, yet he was a Hindu, not a Christian. Personally, I see the life and teachings of Jesus as compatible with traditional Cherokee understandings and practice. At the same time, I see much of Christian belief and teaching as incompatible with traditional Cherokee understandings and practice. This is why I am a follower of Jesus but not a Christian. Of course, even with the biblical stories of Jesus, some sifting and salting is necessary, as I have no doubt but what the original story of Jesus’ life was expanded upon and changed, with words put in his mouth to serve writers’ agendas Others see things differently. It is up to each person to find and follow the path Creator has set for them.

53. Were you encouraged by church leaders to practice your traditional ways?

When I was a boy, about the only traditional way I had left to me was that I knew that everything Creator makes has a soul and a spirit, and I could not believe that Creator/Apportioner gave humankind dominion over everything. That seemed just too convenient to be true. No, I was not encouraged by church leaders in this. I never lost these things, because I didn’t just think them to be true or believe them to be true; I knew them to be true, just as I knew that my blood was red and not blue. The one thing I never left off, even when I was a Baptist minister, was to thank the spirit of a deer and ask its pardon when I killed it, but I didn’t discuss this with church leaders. It was only during my last four years as a Baptist minister that I began openly valuing indigenous cultural practices. I sat on the White River Band Council. Along with my family, I attended and danced in powwows. I went to sweats. I grew my hair. There were repercussions. Most of the members of the church were supportive, but only one of the four deacons was really supportive. One deacon, in particular, took it upon himself to do anything and everything, to drive me out of that church. I hung on and left when the time was right.

I do have to say though, that I received some support from some of my seminary professors. Whenever I received any supportive comments from any of them, it always surprised me. I was surprised more often than not, by supportive comments made in the margins of papers that I thought of as controversial as I

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis was handing them in for evaluation. Even so, I was pretty careful or reserved about what I shared in those papers.

When we were looking to start the first Indian Fellowship in Joplin, having been asked to do so by White River Band elders, I approached Mauricio Vargas of the Missouri Baptist Convention (SBC) and Harold Phillips of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Missouri. Both of these men were very supportive and remain supportive. Even though they understood that I would not be starting Baptist churches nor doing things in a Baptist way, they both thought Indian Fellowships worthy of support. Although we were defunded years ago by the Missouri Baptist Convention, I continue to send monthly reports of Mid American Indian Fellowships activities to Mauricio Vargas. As I’ve indicated previously, we still maintain a reciprocal relationship with CBF of Missouri as well as with other CBF entities. There have been and continue to be several Baptist ministers and ministers of other denominations who are supportive of what Mid American Indian Fellowships is doing. Many others are not.

54. Can you describe the process or put a timeline to your return to traditional cultural ways?

 All my life I have paid close attention to dreams and visions.  All my life I have understood that everything Creator has made is alive, with soul and spirit.  All my life I’ve seen gardening, farming and hunting as sacred activities.  In June or July 1993, for the first time, I went up on a hill to fast and pray.  My family and I started attending cultural activities organized by the White River Band in Feb. 1995.  I danced in a powwow for the first time in June 1995.  I was seated on the White River Band Council in November 1995 and served for four years. For most of that time, I was also the editor of the White River Band newsletter.  I participated in a sweat for the first time in Dec. 1995.  I started growing my hair and stopped wearing suits in Dec. 1995. (It looks like 1995 was a big year for me.)  In Jan. 1999, I was instrumental in starting the Indian Fellowship of Joplin. As more fellowships were added, the larger organization was known as the Indian Fellowships of Missouri and later as Mid American Indian Fellowships.  In March 2000, I began apprenticing to keep a sweat.  In December 2000, we had our first sweat at the Francis place.  In March 2001, my family and I began attending traditional ceremonies at the Morningstar Grounds in Ozark County, Missouri.  In March 2001, I first began raising Old Tobacco.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

 In October 2002, the first Mid American Indian Fellowships Gathering was held.  In April 2003, I finally received my soul name in a traditional ceremony.  In June 2004, I was officially apprenticed by the Morningstar Medicine Society.  In March 2009, I was inducted as a full member of the Morningstar Medicine Society and named as Fire Keeper of the Daksi Grounds, to be established on the Francis place in Bates County, Missouri.  In April 2010, the Sacred Fire was reborn at the Daksi Grounds.

55. Can you point to specific sources of inspiration or understanding that have encouraged you in your return to traditional practice?

Inspiration has come to me through many channels. It has come through parents and siblings and through those who Creator/Apportioner has placed on similar paths. Inspiration has come through careful Bible study and through careful consideration of Cherokee oral traditions. American Indian spiritual people who have served as an inspiration to me through their writings and through conversations and/or ongoing relationships include Uncle Richard Craker and Jerry Painter (Chickamauga Cherokee), Elmer Kingfisher (Cherokee), Bill Baldridge (Cherokee), Herschel Daney (Choctaw), Bill Thompson (Wichita/Cheyenne), Jim McKinney (Potawatomi), George Tinker (Osage/Cherokee), Randy Woodley (Keetoowah Cherokee), Ray Levesque (Cherokee), Richard Twiss (Lakota), Larry Littlebird (Pueblo) and Phil Duran (Pueblo). I cannot say that I am always in complete agreement with any of these, but I am greatly indebted to all of these and to many others besides. Non- Indian writers who have been particularly inspiring to me include Richard A. Horsley, Obery M. Hendricks, Jr. and Mark Brett. However, I must say that the greatest source of inspiration has been of the most direct sort: dreams and visions. Below, I relate four significant dreams or visions that have come to me and have effected change in my life. There are many others, but I’ll not relate them all here.

Cannibals

As a four-year-old child, I had a recurring dream. In the dream I was running hand-in-hand with my daddy through a darkened, big-city department store, late at night. We were running for our lives, chased by cannibals. These cannibals were not dusky hunters from the Congo River Basin, nor were they feathered warriors from New Guinea. These cannibals were a well-respected white family from our church.

My daddy held tight to my hand, pulling me along. We ran up a stalled escalator and were finally cornered by a railing in an upper level of the store. As the cannibals drew in closer, we turned and leaped over the railing into the darkness.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

I had this dream four times, and to this day, I can remember it as clearly as that first night when I awoke crying and screaming, "Mommy! Mommy!" Since I was four-years-old, I've always been wary of cannibals, and have watched for them in places others might not think of looking, such as in church, at school, or even in department stores.

The Talking Deer

I used to have frequent dreams about deer. Usually, in the dreams, I was hunting the deer. After I killed the deer, the deer would rise up and change form into a human being. Then we would sit together on a log, while the deer talked. I would wake, trying my hardest to recall what the deer said, but I could never remember.

Deer are very important to Cherokee people. The white folks used to call the deer the “Cherokee sheep”. Before the invasion, the Cherokee economy was based primarily on the growing of corn and other agricultural staples and the managing and harvesting of deer. The Cherokees understand that the deer and the humans live by a treaty. The deer have lovingly agreed to give of themselves that the people may live. The humans have agreed to take no more than is needed and only in a respectful way.

I'm Cherokee. If a deer has something to say to me, I'm going to listen. So, I was frustrated. Year after year, I had these dreams of a deer talking to me, but, for the life of me, I could not recall what was said.

Then the dream changed. Instead of hunting the deer, I was standing on a hillside watching my father-in-law's sheep grazing in the lush, green pasture below. I really used to do that. My wife Janet and I took care of her father's sheep in the Hocking Hills of Ohio for a few years after we married. I was also pastoring a little Baptist church and attending college. That’s the life I was leading at the time this dream occurred.

In the dream, I was watching the sheep when a small herd of deer walked out of the woods and began eating the grass in the pasture. Normally, I was always thrilled to see deer, but in the dream I was angry. I went charging down the hillside, waving my shepherd's rod. "Get back into the woods!" I yelled, "This pasture is for the sheep! Get back into the woods, you crazy deer!" I ran right up to the deer, screaming and yelling, threatening with my club, but the deer didn't run away. They all just stood there looking at me like I was stupid.

And then the big buck deer stepped forward and spoke to me. He didn't change into human form this time; he just spoke as a deer. And this is what he said. "There is room for us too, in the Father's pasture."

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

Bear Cubs and White Men

I was praying on a hill some years ago. Late the first night, I was startled from sleep by what sounded like a baby crying. Jumping up, I looked around in the darkness to see a black bear cub, very close, not more than six feet away, crying loudly for his mother. This scared me! "I wonder where that cub's mother is?" I thought. Maybe I'm in between the cub and its mother. This can't be a healthy situation." I thought the best thing to do was to stay within the protection of the circle, not to say or do anything, just hunker down, cover my head, close my eyes and hope for the best. Then I felt something chewing on my ear and the side of my face! "Oh no! Is this the mother bear?" I thought. But no, it was another cub. So now there were two of them! I got up to shoo them away, and then, suddenly, the two bear cubs changed into two young white men, neatly dressed, both with neatly groomed black hair.

The young men said I had been on the hill long enough. "You are very hungry," they said. "Come with us, we'll take care of you." I stepped across the west side of the circle and followed the young men down the hill. At the base camp, my sons Peter and John joined us. The young men had a shiny black limousine. I climbed in the back along with Peter and John, and the young men drove to our house, where we were joined by my wife Janet, our daughter Sarah and our youngest son Luke. From there, the young men drove us to the city. They owned a fancy restaurant in the downtown area. At this time of night, the restaurant was closed, but the young men were taking us there and would prepare a special meal for us. As we walked across the parking lot to the restaurant, I quietly asked Janet, "Do you think this is really happening?"

"In waking life," Janet said, "Bear cubs don't normally change into white men. I think this is a vision."

"But you're here," I said.

"Yes, I'm here," Janet answered.

After eating a fine meal in the restaurant, I felt bad about leaving the hill. Then I thought about how hard the ground was, with hickory nuts and sticks under the quilt and never being quite able to get comfortable. I said to one of the young white men, "Do you think I'll rest better tonight?"

The man looked at me in a strangely savage way, as he and his brother stepped toward me. "You'll rest tonight and always," he said, "for now we will take off your head." They lunged at me and one of them tried to strangle me, but I fought him off. We fought them both off and ran from that place.

Whitewash

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

In a dream, my son Peter and I were applying for a job with a large company. I’m not quite sure what this company made or did, if anything. However, it was a large company, and Peter and I were, evidently, in need of employment.

We waited with several other applicants in a large waiting room, until an important looking woman asked us to accompany her to what would probably amount to another waiting room. Walking across the company grounds, Peter and I noticed the buildings were all brightly whitewashed. The roofs of the buildings, as well as the walls, were blindingly white. The sidewalks and pavements were also whitewashed, along with the short, mowed grass between the sidewalks and pavements. In fact, looking around as we followed the woman, we saw that everything on the company property was whitewashed, and there was nothing there that was not whitewashed. Even the trees, not just the trunks, but entire trees were whitewashed, as well as all the landscape shrubbery and even the birds unlucky enough to have been perched in the trees or shrubbery at the time the whitewashing was done. As we approached one of these hapless whitewashed avians that appeared glued to a twig on a whitewashed bush, we discussed its uncertain identity. “Is it a blue jay?” we wondered, “or someone’s escaped cockatiel?” The bird seemed to be dead, but as I touched its chest and began scraping off layers of whitewash with my fingernail, it blinked its eyes. A spark of life remained under all that whitewash after all.

56. Is your thinking the result of figuring things out on your own, apart from others, or have you been connected to a kind of network?

Just as with any other human being, I have been blessed with eyes and ears through which to observe and a mind with which to make sense of the observations. Even so, I can in no wise say I figure things out on my own. I understand that what may seem to be a simple observation may in some way be guided. Why do I pay particular attention to this or that? What is the source of the awareness? Also, a significant dream or vision is not the same as when someone thinks up an idea and then calls it a dream or a vision. So, when I learn through observation or through dreams and visions, it is not exactly “on my own.” There is a dynamic in which I work with the guidance of the Spirit to come to some realization of what is being communicated to me from beyond myself.

Mid American Indian Fellowships is itself, a network. There are several helpers (ministers) involved with the fellowships. We discuss things and work through issues. We also network with many who are outside the Mid American Indian Fellowships. There is our traditional community, specifically, those with whom we gather for traditional ceremonies. Whenever I write something, I share it usually with a few people, then with those who attend the Indian Fellowships that I attend and then with the several hundred people on the Mid American Indian Fellowships e-mail linkup. I receive feedback at each juncture. From time to time, someone from one of the Indian Fellowships or someone who has read one

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis of my writings will say something like this: “I have always thought that way; I just didn’t know how to say it.” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that, I’d have nearly enough for a burger and drink from the Wendy’s value menu. Such comments help me realize that it is all much bigger than me; there is an overarching consciousness or awareness involved. That’s the biggest network of all – the entire universe. We are all a part of that network.

57. Have you ever experienced criticism or rejection as a result of returning to your traditional cultural practices?

Mid American Indian Fellowships was defunded by the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board within one month of their first funding us – all that paperwork for one $300.00 check. The Missouri Baptist Convention (SBC) defunded us after just a couple of years, because we were not incorporating as Missouri Baptist and Southern Baptist churches, this even though it was plainly communicated from the first that we would never identify ourselves or incorporate as Baptist churches.

Before people can begin the process of decolonization, they must begin to understand the need for decolonization. In order to understand the need for decolonization, people have to understand the history and ongoing nature of colonization and that they, themselves, actually all of us, are colonized. When I write or speak on the history and nature of colonization and the need for decolonization I always receive positive feedback. However, I also receive angry feedback. I am accused of being “prejudiced against white people” or even “racist against white people.” This is a real stretcher for the word “racist,” since I lack access to the type of power structure that could allow me to be “racist” against anyone. I’ve also been called “unpatriotic” (I plead guilty to this one as I agree with Samuel Adams that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”). To top it off, I’ve been called, “un-American” or even an “anti-American propagandist.” There are those who come along and just want to play Indian. After awhile, they pick up their toys and storm away, mad.

My most public condemnation, so far, was in a January 2005 article entitled “Is ‘The Downgrade’ Coming to a Church Near You?” published in the monthly newspaper of the Missouri Baptist Convention and posted on their website. In the article, the Missouri Baptist Convention Executive Director misquoted some things I had said during a talk given on a Wednesday night in a Baptist Church in Columbia, Missouri and went on to say, “How can a group of people accept such heresy?” It was interesting that he never once made direct reference to scripture in refuting what I had said (distorted and misquoted though it was) as heresy. It was heresy simply because he said it was heresy. I wrote an open letter in response to the article, correcting the misquotes and using Christian scripture to back up every assertion I made. I closed by saying, “Such rejection should…. not be surprising to those who read and believe the Bible. The early followers of Jesus were accused of spreading heresy (Acts 24:14). Jesus himself was

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis accused of blasphemy (Matthew 26:65). I feel honored that [the MBC Executive Director] would place me in such good company.” I sent a copy of the letter to the MBC Executive Director. The letter did not make it into the MBC newspaper, and I received no reply.

Other people, particularly some Southern Baptist ministers, have distanced themselves from Mid American Indian Fellowships from fear of being labeled, along with us, as heretical.

Some of those within my own extended family have distanced themselves from me, to greater or lesser extents, as I have returned to traditional indigenous cultural practices. Some of them probably think I’m going to hell. However, others within the extended family have drawn closer in relationship, as they are walking similar paths to the one I am on.

A few traditional Indian people have expressed criticism toward what I say or do, most often without fully understanding what it really is that I say or do, accusing me of “mixing the ways” or what not. I find them much more willing to dialogue than say, the MBC Executive Director.

58. Didn’t Cherokees voluntarily accept Christianity a long time ago? Isn’t your return to traditional Cherokee spiritual practices disrespectful to your Cherokee ancestors who renounced those practices in preference for Christianity?

Cherokees in the East initially invited Christian missionaries into Cherokee territory for one purpose and one purpose only: to teach Cherokee children to read and write English, so that legal documents placed before Cherokees could be read and understood by Cherokees, before either being signed or rejected by Cherokees. However, missionaries arrived with ulterior motives, one of which was Christian conversion or proselytizing. Even so, while Cherokees still considered themselves to be, in some way, a viable sovereignty holding a line against European-American conquest, Christian conversion was either not happening at all or was proceeding at a snail’s pace and only with very young and impressionable school children. It was only as Cherokees began to feel themselves powerless in the face of European-American encroachment and conquest that Christian conversion began happening on any significant scale.

Presbyterian missionary Cephas Washburn was the first non-Catholic missionary west of the Mississippi. Coming among the Chickamauga Cherokees and locating his mission school in the area of the present town of Lamar, Arkansas, Washburn served very effectively, I think, as a spy for the United States government. His effectiveness in making Christian converts, on the other hand, was minimal, at best. Only as the Chickamaugas of Missouri and Arkansas found themselves overrun by European-Americans and faced with a choice of

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis moving further west or attempting to blend in, only then did Chickamauga Cherokees convert to Christianity in large numbers.

So, did Cherokees voluntarily accept Christian conversion? It seems to me that most Cherokees said “yes” to Christian conversion at a time when saying “no” had ceased to be a viable option. I do not see that as voluntary acceptance.

As for my ancestors: I have the audacity to think that they are proud of me. I am proud of them too. I certainly have and will continue to make mistakes, but I think the overall direction of my life honors my ancestors.

59. What do you think of the idea that American Indians descend from the “Lost Tribes” of Israel?

Thomas Thorowgood, writing in the mid 17th Century, may have been the first to propagate the idea of Hebraic origins of American Indians. Other prominent voices to agree with the premise during the following 180 years or so included John Eliot, Roger Williams, William Penn, Cotton Mather, William Bartram, James Adair, Jonathan Edwards, Elias Boudinott (not the Cherokee but his white benefactor of the same name), Israel Worsley and John Howard Payne. And then there was Joseph Smith, Jr. who set himself apart from the others by making the claim that his writings on the subject, which comprise The Book of Mormon, are of ancient and divine origin.

The idea that American Indians descend from Hebrews originated in the minds of European and European-American observers, not from Indians. Those who developed and propagated the idea had only limited understandings of American Indian spiritualities and oral traditions. As linguists, their skills were sketchy at best. Finally, they all shared a common ethnocentric and racist religious belief or superstition, namely that God spoke to or gave instructions only to his exclusively “chosen people”: first the Hebrews and later the Christians. In their interactions with Indians, these men saw behaviors that were admirable. In their observation of Indian ceremonies, they saw or thought they saw similarities to Jewish ceremonies outlined in the Christian Bible. In all honesty, these men could not help but see some good in the ceremonies and lifestyles of American Indians, and since the Indians were by no means Christian, it followed that the Indians must be Hebrew; otherwise the preconceived notions of exclusively “chosen people” and “God’s economy” would be disproved. Any differentiation from the Jewish ceremonies and practices were seen as evidence of these supposed “Hebrews in America” having fallen into darkness and of their need for white, Christian missionaries to restore them to their “true Hebrew identity” and instruct them about the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

To this day, Later Day Saints and those of certain “Messianic” sects continue in the mission of convincing Indian people of our supposed Hebrew origins and identity.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

Most of those who religiously hold to the idea of Hebraic origins of American Indians, tie the idea into the story of the “Lost Tribes of Israel.” Aside from the incredibly scanty evidence used to trace the so-called migration routes of the “Lost Tribes,” the greatest problem with this story is just this: Scripturally and historically, there are no lost tribes of Israel. Serious Old Testament scholars, both Jewish and Christian, have been in agreement on this from the beginning.

It is true that today you will find the people of Israel nearly everywhere. They are a recognizable people with very distinct, diagnostic characteristics: 1. They know who they are and need no one to tell them. 2. Although scattered, they form communities and refer to themselves as "Jews," whether they dwell in Africa and look African or in Asia and look Asian or in Europe or America and look European. 3. Their "Holy Land" (the land they feel special connection with) is in the Middle East, not in North Carolina or South Dakota or anywhere else. 4. They keep a weekly Sabbath Day as well as other Jewish or Israelite Holy Days. 5. They circumcise their male children.

If a people does not share these characteristics, especially that last one, rest assured they are not Hebrews.

Each indigenous people or tribe in this island now called America has its own long and dignified heritage. As for Cherokees, there is ample evidence from the archeological record and our own oral tradition of our establishment as a distinct people in the Southern Appalachian region more than 10,000 years ago. Our Sacred Fire and annual ceremonies began to be kept more than 5,000 years ago at Kituwa, in what is now called North Carolina. Our history as a people goes back long before the time of Abraham, long before the founding of any of the notorious empires in the Middle East, long before the existence of a group of tribes called “Hebrews.” We are indigenous. We emerged, as a people, from this land, not some other. We know who we are. We remember our origins.

So what harm does it do, to assert without any sound historical, archeological or genetic evidence that American Indians are descended from Hebrews? This is no less than an attack on our unique national identities and a diminishment of our cultural integrity and sovereignty. More precisely, this is an attack on our identity as indigenous peoples of the Americas, since, by definition, an indigenous tribe, nation or people group is emergent from the land in which they reside. Creator has already revealed to us who we are in relation to him and to the Earth, the Land. We do not need someone to come in and correct Creator’s revelation for us as if we are fools. Furthermore, to say that this nation is Israel or that nation is Israel or perhaps the whole world is Israel also undermines and diminishes the distinct national identity and cultural uniqueness of the Jewish people.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

I pray for the day when we will all respect one another, appreciating our relatedness and cultural similarity, while celebrating our cultural differences. Let us remember what has been called the great commandment, ".... love your neighbor as yourself...." (Leviticus 19:18). From what I can see, Creator loves variety!

60. If I gave you a copy of the Book of Mormon, would you read it?

I have read The Book of Mormon, carefully read it, cover to cover. I have also read The Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price. To its credit, I will say that tucked within The Book of Mormon, one may find tiny pearls, bits and pieces of good, of truth. For instance, in The Book of Mormon, the Earth is seen as alive, animals are understood as having souls and Creator is understood as never ceasing in communication with creation. That being said, I find The Book of Mormon to be, in no small part, racist and defamatory, not only to American Indians but to Jews as well and to all people because of the fabricated and demonstrably false history communicated in its pages. Granted, The Book of Mormon admits to containing error (Mormon 8:12). My question would be, How much error is admissible in a book claiming status as a Testament from God? As one trained in critical analysis of literature and scripture, it is my opinion that The Book of Mormon is most assuredly a product of 19th Century America, not from some earlier period. Furthermore, The Book of Mormon makes exclusive claim to ultimate truth, as the continuing communication of Deity is asserted as coming primarily through the “chosen prophet”. To my way of thinking, replacing a people’s history with a fictitious history claiming divine authorship and authority is the most egregious act of cultural genocide imaginable.

61. Don’t we all descend from Adam, from Noah and from those who were dispersed at the Tower of Babel?

Saying we all descend from the Adam and Eve of the Jewish origin story is really not so different than saying we all descend from the so-called “Lost Tribes of Israel.” Every indigenous people on earth has its own origin story. To take the origin story of one people, in this case the Jews, and to universalize that story for all peoples everywhere is first to exhibit a gross misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of the story and second to perpetrate an act of cultural violence against all other indigenous cultures planted by Creator in the earth. We have our own stories, and they fit us well.

But of course, the biblical literalists are not the only ones perpetrating acts of violence against indigenous cultures. New Age practitioners of various types twist or misrepresent American Indian origin stories to fit their own preconceived ideas. Rather than Adam, Noah and the Tower of Babel, they come telling us we all originated in the “Lost Continent of Atlantis” or were conveyed to and planted

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis in the earth by extraterrestrial space travelers. This is just one more example of cultural cannibalism or spiritual rape.

62. Don’t you want your part in the inheritance of the sons of Abraham?

I am not a son of Abraham; I am a child of Kanati and Selu. As for the inheritance of the sons of Abraham: I am content with the inheritance of my own ancestors and my own people. I have no desire to join the millions squabbling over the inheritance of Abraham. Furthermore, I need no one to tell me who my ancestors are or who I am.

63. Do you think the person referred to as White Otter in some Cherokee stories was a type of Christ, or do you think White Otter is the same as Jesus?

Looking back to the Roman Empire of 17 hundred or 18 hundred years ago, there were those who were asking the Christians whether the stories of Jesus were not the same as the Egyptian stories of Horis, Osiris and Serapis or the Phrygian stories of Attis or the Greek stories of Prometheus, Heracles and Dionysus or the Persian stories of Zoroaster and Mithra or the Hindustani stories of Krishna and Buddha. Many Hindus, to this day, see the stories of Jesus as simply rehashed and repositioned Krishna stories. In the early centuries of the Common Era, there were many Christians who basically said, “Yes, the stories are all basically the same and the path or way so recently termed ‘Christianity’ far predates the stories of Jesus and really has always been.” These early Christians understood the Jesus stories as expressions of the great, overarching story played out time and again in the Earth and eternally proclaimed in the Heavens (Psalm 19:1-6; Romans 10:18). They saw the stories of Jesus as witnessing the universal story of birth, celebration, deliverance, development, consecration, power, healing, rejection, betrayal, death, burial and resurrection – as in Earth, so in Heaven; as in Heaven, so in Earth.

However, there were other Christians who rose up to say, “No, the Jesus stories are superior to all other stories, as they are the only ‘true’ stories, and all who aver otherwise are accursed.” Some went so far as to say that all the older stories, so close in detail to the stories of Jesus, were authored by the devil as decoys to lure people from the true stories. These Christians, claiming exclusive possession of ultimate truth, traversed (and still traverse) land and sea, seeking everywhere to make proselytes. A new word: “bigot” was coined as a descriptive name for these who declared their God (deified theology) as bigger than the theology of those whose cultures, lands and souls they sought to conquer and cannibalize.

In contrast to the word’s original use in the ancient Mediterranean region, I think the majority of people today, Christian and otherwise, use the term “Christ” only in reference to Jesus, whose stories are recorded in the Christian Bible. With

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis this in mind, I think when people ask, “Is White Otter a type of Christ?” they are really asking, “Do the White Otter stories point toward or pave the way for the biblical stories of Jesus Christ?”

The story of White Otter or Creator-Offspring is very important to Cherokee culture. Is White Otter a “type” of Christ? I could turn the question around to ask, “Is Jesus an expression of White Otter?” To ask such questions presupposes that one story or the other is the archetype, making the other merely representative and therefore less.

64. What about the Pale Prophet? Didn’t Jesus walk among the Native American tribes after his crucifixion and resurrection?

There is a certain story I used to relate at least annually. It is a story about the spirit beings referred to as the Little People Who Wear White bringing news to the Cherokee people concerning the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. There is a version of the story in which the Little People Who Wear White begin to weep as they tell of the crucifixion. In another version it is the Cherokees who weep as the story is told, and the tears change into tiny crosses of staurolite crystal. I actually have one of these little crosses which I used to bring out as I told the story.

Sometimes Indian Christian elders will say things to the effect that Indians have always been Christian or sometimes even one particular denomination of Christian, such as Baptist. The use of the cross in medicine wheels, tattoos, etc. is often used to back this assertion. Then there are the Cherokee stories of the Little People Who Wear White and similar stories in other Indian cultures, some of which assert that, we didn’t just receive word of Jesus but that Jesus himself came here and walked among the American Indian people after his crucifixion.

Why do I appreciate these stories? Well, there is a line of reasoning among some European Americans that goes something like this: “We came to your country. We stole your land. We raped your women. We killed most of you. But, we brought you Jesus! We gave you hope of eternal life in heaven, and that more than makes up for all the wrongs that were done.”

The Little People Who Wear White stories negate that idea. I do not understand the purpose of the stories to be, as some might suppose, the proving of some literal or historic occurrence or visitation. The purpose of the stories, as I see it, is to say, “Your name for Creator is Jesus? Alright, if that’s the name you understand and insist upon, that’s a name we will use, but we want you to know Creator has been here from the beginning, revealed in our own stories as well as in our ceremonies, our agriculture and in the structure of our language. Creator- Offspring was already here and remains here, embodied by all creation and in every child born to the people. Creator-Spirit is everywhere. Creator did not have to hitch a ride with robbers.”

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

The reason I backed off from and pretty much stopped using the stories of the Little People Who Wear White is that I came to realize there are those, even among our own people, who misunderstand the stories as literal history. Taking the stories literally, negates or contradicts what I see as the original purpose of the stories and opens the people up to further acts of colonization and cultural genocide.

In asking about the “Pale Prophet,” you must be referring to the book He Walked the Americas by L. Taylor Hansen first published in 1963. All references to the “Pale Prophet” I have encountered have been either while reading this book or conversing with others who have read this book. Supposedly, Ms. Hansen spent 25 years traveling around North and South America gathering information from innumerable indigenous oral traditions and visiting archeological sites. I may be wrong, but from the stereotypical dialogue found in the book, I would nearer believe she spent those 25 years reading dime novels and watching B-Westerns.

He Walked the Americas is a classic example of a non-Indian researcher or pseudo-researcher taking bits and pieces of tribal oral traditions outside their greater cultural contexts and twisting them to fit a preconceived agenda.

Here is my advice: Beware of books written by non-Indians about Indians. I’m not saying all such books are misleading, but just beware. Beware of non- Indians who come among Indians with religious agendas. But especially, beware of books about Indians written by non-Indians with religious agendas.

65. Aren’t American Indian traditional spiritualities primarily characterized by occult rites and pagan practices?

Those are some fascinating words with some very interesting histories. The word “pagan,” originating with the Roman Empire, was originally used in reference to People of the Land, those living outside of cities and therefore not easily controlled and exploited by the Empire. Later, it was used to describe those whose spiritualities fell outside imperial sanction. Christians were considered pagan until 313 C.E. when the Roman Emperor Constantine granted imperial sanction to Christianity. During the reign of Emperor Theodosius (379- 395 C.E.), Christianity became the only religion sanctioned by Rome. From that time, the Roman Empire defined all non-Christian religions and spiritualities as pagan, and began persecuting them even as Christians had once been persecuted.

The word “occult” simply means “hidden.” During the three centuries when Christianity was a pagan and persecuted spirituality within the Roman Empire, Christianity was also an occult spirituality, in the sense that Christians were forced underground, had to conceal many of their activities, used secret signs, etc. You might recall Jesus’ warning to his followers: “Do not give dogs what is

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces” (Matthew 7:6). When Christianity became the imperially sanctioned religion of power and began persecuting other religions and spiritualities, these other religions and spiritualities were forced into hiding just as Christianity had once been. So, now all non-Christian religions and spiritualities and also all forms of Christianity deemed “heretical” were hidden or occult, and since they were hidden from the imperially sanctioned Christian Church, the leadership of the imperially sanctioned Christian Church declared them “demonic.” And so, the word “occult” took on new meaning in the minds of many Christians. The word still means simply “hidden” (Look it up.), but for many Christian people the word “occult” also carries the implied meaning of “demonic.” For hundreds of years, American Indian spiritual practices were outlawed all across the country, even on Indian reservations, and so where these practices continued, they had to be done in secret. Since the American Indian Religious Freedom Resolution was passed by Congress and signed into law in1978, American Indian spiritualities have had limited and tenuous freedom of practice in the United States. However, interference continues to occur, from Christian missionaries as well as from those working for certain government agencies. For this reason, most traditional American Indian ceremonies are by invitation only rather than being open to the public. Furthermore, details of traditional indigenous ceremonies and deep spiritual insights are generally not spoken of openly for at least two reasons. To begin with, ceremonies are physical acts of prayer and may only be comprehended or understood through sincere participation, not through verbal or written description. Secondly, those who continue to set themselves against indigenous cultures, especially those who believe their own religion to be the exclusive custodian and purveyor of spiritual truth, will never understand indigenous spiritualities; they will, in fact, willfully misunderstand, regardless of what may be said in explanation. So, are the traditional ways occult? Well, sometimes the traditional ways must be hidden. But, are they demonic? To my way of thinking, demonic is as demonic does. Is the one being persecuted demonic, or is the persecutor demonic?

66. Don’t American Indian traditional beliefs basically amount to idolatry?

I was raised Christian and served as a Baptist minister for 13 years. Back when I was a pastor, I often found myself vacillating between following what I perceived to be a strong spiritual leading toward Cherokee spiritual practices and recoiling from that in fear that it was a compromise of my Christian beliefs or possibly not reconcilable with the Bible. In December of 1992, I was serving as pastor of Perkins Baptist Church in southeast Missouri. That year, a young man suggested that for our Christmas Eve service, we could wrap a large pasteboard box in Christmas paper with a fancy bow on top. On small slips of paper, people would write down the things that needed to be removed from their lives: the perceived sins or issues with which they were particularly struggling. Before the people would partake of the bread and grape juice that night, they would individually approach and drop their tightly folded slips of paper through a slot in

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis the top of the brightly wrapped box. This was to be our gift to Jesus. Afterward, the box would be taken outside the building and burned. I really liked this idea, and it was incorporated into the Christmas Eve service that year.

As I approached the box that night, I was thinking of the struggles I was having with issues related to Cherokee spirituality. I was willing, if need be, to completely back off and leave the Cherokee ways behind forever. On my slip of paper was a single word: IDOLATRY.

As the box burned that night, we stood in awe. It was just a wrapped pasteboard box with maybe 50 or 60 small slips of paper inside, but multi-colored flames shot up from that box, reaching heights of 20 feet or more and propelling showers of sparks which dispersed and blended into the starry sky.

That night marked a turning point in my life. Shortly after that, Creator’s communication to me during my prayer times basically stopped, except for a still, small voice which said only “Meet me on Des Arc.” The summer of 1993 found me fasting and praying on the summit of that remote Ozark peak, the second highest mountain in Missouri. I had no human being to put me on the mountain or to take me off, but I had helpers, and Creator had much to say while I was there. And, a process began in me – a process of stripping my idols away, one by one. I can’t say whether all my idols are gone yet or if there are still more of which I must be shorn. The stripping away or forsaking of idols is a very uncomfortable experience. It certainly does not happen in one day or one night, but when it happens, the experience of freedom is something that may not be expressed with words. But get this: My idolatry – my idols were not what I had imagined them to be. None of them had anything to do with Cherokee spirituality.

As I have come to see it, indigenous spiritualities are not belief systems, which is to say, they are not characterized by a blind following of the testimony of others. Rather, indigenous spiritualities are experiential. They are characterized by seeing/experiencing Creator begotten in, enfleshed by, embodied in all of creation – seeing the unity in diversity or harmony of all that is and responding to that. It is not belief but rather observation and practice. How can that be idolatry? Those who question others about idolatry would do well to examine themselves.

67. You speak of Creator embodied by creation. Are you a pantheist or a panentheist?

These are, of course, Greek categories; I’m not Greek. That being said, as I understand it, a panentheist is one who sees Creator as fully indwelling or embodied by creation but also as standing outside and apart from or transcendent over creation. A pantheist, on the other hand, sees Creator and creation as so completely intertwined as to be inseparable.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

So, am I a pantheist or a panentheist? I don’t know. I don’t know enough to know. I have never been to the edge of the universe to see whether or not Creator’s presence goes beyond it. I don’t even know whether the universe has an edge. Creation as well as Creator may go on and on forever for all I know. Creation as well as Creator may be eternal for all I know. But the fact remains, I don’t know.

As I understand it, the Attender or Awareness, the first soul if you will, lies at the heart of hearts of each and every aspect of creation. This I understand as the presence of Creator in creation. Creator may also be understood as the connection between each and every aspect of creation, a connection that permeates all of space, something of which indigenous people have always had some awareness and what physicists have come to call “dark matter” and “dark energy” in recent years. So, as I understand it, it’s not just one Jewish man or one religious group through which Creator inhabits creation. Creator is visibly embodied by all creation, all the time. For me, this is not a faith statement. I look around me and see it. I feel it; I experience it, firsthand. But yes, our Chickamauga Cherokee traditions and, I think, other indigenous traditions, give the idea that Creator is also beyond anything we can see, feel or experience – the Great Mystery.

My point in saying I don’t know enough to know whether I am a pantheist or panentheist is just this: I can see and experience Creator in Creation (the immanence of God or God with us). As for Creator beyond creation (the transcendence of God): I have never experienced that. I will never experience that. I can only guess, or I can trust some other human voice that claims to know but does not know, cannot know.

Theology is not what we know about God; theology is what we say about God. Many things are said by those who do not know and who only parrot others who were also saying things they did not know.

68. According to your indigenous spirituality, is Creator exclusively male?

In some of my writings I have been guilty of using exclusively male-gendered pronouns in designation of Creator or of Deity in general. I suppose I have done this in order to keep certain people from being distracted into God-and-gender arguments – a lame excuse. But no, within Cherokee spirituality, Creator is not exclusively male. Since Deity is mirrored in or imaged by creation, we see that Deity is both male and female, both and neither. Indeed, within Cherokee culture as I am taught, the act of creating is most often seen as a function of the female, while the act of apportioning is mostly understood as a function of the male. For instance, Momma generally baked the pie and Daddy generally cut the pie into pieces. This doesn’t mean Momma didn’t cut the pie from time to time or that Daddy didn’t…. no, as far as I know, my Daddy never baked a pie in his life, nor

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis did he ever give birth to a baby. So, when I say Creator/Apportioner, I am, in my own mind, balancing female and male attributes of Deity with that designation.

69. In your traditional ways, do you have any understanding of an afterlife? If so, do you believe in heaven and hell?

Traditional Chickamauga Cherokee understandings and teachings concerning life after death are as complex and as highly developed as those of any other spiritual tradition. However, the primary focus of Chickamauga Cherokee spirituality is the living of life now, in balance and in harmony with all that is, rather than focusing on life after death which may only be spoken of in a metaphoric sense. The plant peoples: Cedar, Sage, Tobacco, along with many other medicinal herbs, assist us in rebalancing.

In the traditional way, we speak of the Jusgina Country. The Cherokee word “jusgina” means ghost or spirit. However, Christian missionary Bible translators misused or defiled this word by making it the Cherokee biblical designation for the devil. So, in the Cherokee Bible, the blessed place of ghosts or spirits of the dearly departed becomes the devil’s place or hell.

I don’t think we have any traditional understanding comparable to Christian teachings about hell. There is a Cherokee tradition of being judged, not by Creator but by the guardian spirits of the animals. We are judged by how we have treated the animals, by whether we have been respectful or disrespectful toward those who help us in so many ways, often to the extent of giving their lives to allow us another day of life in the earth. It is also said that those who lack courage will not make it across the great river that all must cross in the spiritual journey, instead, they will be swept along, floundering in the great river’s current. From this, we understand the primary value to be courage. This makes more sense when we understand courage as selflessness and cowardice as self- absorption or selfishness. From this perspective, the use of fear as a spiritual motivator or manipulator, as it is so often used by the “hell-fire and brimstone” variety of Christian preachers, is counter productive. When people are instilled with cowardice rather than courage, they will not live this life well, nor will they be prepared for the life to come.

The Mayas and others, I think, predicted that the end of the past Age of the World would be punctuated by what are commonly translated as “nine hells” or nine 52 year cycles characterized by imbalance. The first of the “nine hells” began the same year Cortez arrived in Mexico. In this case “hell” can be seen as a condition imposed by outside forces seeking control and bringing gross imbalance to the Land and to the People of the Land. The imposition happened here in the Earth. However, what is done in the Earth affects the heavens, and what is done in the heavens affects the Earth. All is connected.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

70. Would you say that Cherokee spirituality includes a superstitious fear of animal spirits?

Our Chickamauga Cherokee spirituality encourages us to treat all others, including animals, with respect, while reminding us that disrespectful behaviors have consequences. As difficult as it may be for some to comprehend or accept, indigenous spiritualities are not religious systems that seek to control people through the agency of fear.

71. What does an eagle feather symbolize?

An eagle feather does not symbolize anything. An eagle feather is an eagle feather. It is real, not symbolic. The overarching Spirit of the Eagle or Uwohali is understood to be a special protector of the Indian peoples as well as a messenger between Creator and human beings. An eagle feather is a genuine, tangible connection to the Spirit of the Eagle. An eagle feather is not symbolic of anything. It is real. It’s the same with hawk feathers or turkey feathers or with any of the other feathers that connect with specific helper spirits. The only time it can be said that a feather is a symbol is when it’s say, a chicken feather or a domestic turkey feather painted or dyed to resemble an eagle feather, hawk feather or some other kind of feather. In that case, you do have a symbol. The painted feather is symbolic of something it is not, and the only reason you see anything like that used by Indian people is because of government interference with our spiritualities. “What does an eagle feather symbolize?” One may as well ask “What does the Sacred Fire symbolize?” or “What do tobacco and cedar symbolize? The Sacred Fire is the Sacred Fire. Tobacco is Tobacco. Cedar is Cedar. They do not symbolize anything; they are what they are. To the best of my understanding, indigenous spiritualities are about tangible spiritual connections, not symbolism.

72. What do you Indians smoke in your pipes? Is it pot or peyote?

Jo-l A-ga-yv-li (Cherokee), Nicotiana Rustica (Latin), Old Tobacco (English) – this is what I smoke in my pipe. It is the ancient tobacco that was grown and used throughout the eastern half of North America before John Rolfe of the Jamestown Colony brought other varieties of tobacco from the West Indies for commercial production. I grow my own. I cut or blend this tobacco with my own mixture of herbs. I’ll not tell you exactly what I use, but herbs used by Indian people to blend with tobacco include bear berry leaves, sumac, sunflower leaves, mullein, red willow bark, mint and sage.

I don’t know where this rumor started about American Indians smoking marijuana in our ceremonial pipes. Maybe it started with the hippies. Some of them wanted to live like Indians but didn’t have a clue as to what that meant. Of course, just as in every other ethnicity, there are Indian people who are really messed up and will do about anything, but smoking marijuana in a ceremonial

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis pipe is very extreme even for those Indians who are really messed up. To go around saying that Indians smoke marijuana in our ceremonial pipes is like saying Roman Catholics priests use opium in the Eucharist or that Baptists snort methamphetamine during the Lord’s Supper. No one would show that much disrespect, at least not toward Baptists or Catholics.

Peyote, a medicinal cactus used by those of the Native American Church in special prayer meetings, is not smoked, but rather ingested.

73. Is there a traditional Indian understanding of sin and atonement?

Sin is an interesting word and an interesting concept. In archery competition, the distance between the bull’s eye or center of a target and where a competitor’s arrow hits is the measurement of the competitor’s sin. To sin is to miss the mark. In the larger sense, to sin is to make mistakes. I think nearly everyone understands the concept of making mistakes. According to indigenous wisdom, as I have been taught and understand it, one learns and develops by taking risks and making mistakes. No one ever learned to accurately shoot a bow without long and painful practice in which the mark was missed many, many times.

Jesus asked, “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11). Here is my question: Human parents love their children and are patient with their children when they make mistakes. What parent would torture and kill his child for making a mistake? Or, what parent would decree that one child must be tortured and killed for the mistakes of his siblings in order to somehow satisfy the parent’s honor? How is it that the heavenly parent has been imagined and represented as more cruel and unreasonable than the worst of human parents?

Here’s something else that has me confused: It is written that “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). How does one grow in wisdom without first being, in some way, lacking in wisdom? How does one grow in favor without first being, in some way, lacking in favor?

In baseball, those who hit the most homeruns are also the ones who strike out most often. Similarly, in Cherokee Stickball, it takes many attempts, many misses, before a goal is successfully made. Mistakes and accomplishments stand in balance. That is the indigenous understanding, as I understand it – not sin and guilt and fear of an insanely cruel and vindictive deity, but rather, working with Creator/Apportioner to live ones life in balance and harmony in relationship with all that is.

There is a story going back to the 1700s, about a young teenage boy of the Shawnee tribe who ran away from his first battle. Although no one said anything

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis to him or laid any blame on him for the desertion, the boy felt very ashamed. Finally, the boy mustered courage to speak to his adoptive father, the War Chief of the people. “Father, I ran away from the battle,” the boy said.

“So?” his father began with a shrug of his shoulders. “I ran away from my first battle too.” His father went on to explain that a man’s life is not his own but belongs to the people. Each of us is part of something greater than ourselves. Remembering this helps us have courage. The boy’s name was Tecumseh. He never ran from another battle.

A person is but a member of a people, just as an arm or a leg is a member of a body. The Earth is a living organism, but so is the Universe as a whole: One Living Organism – Unity in Diversity – Harmony. There is no real division, not even a real divide between energy and matter. Matter is simply energy in another form. There is also no real divide between the spiritual and the physical. To imagine a divide is to pull away from Creator, as if that were possible.

To me, atonement begins with the basic awareness that I, myself, cannot be defined apart from my people or apart from the plants and animals and minerals I eat, the water I drink and the air I breathe, apart from the Earth in her entirety, apart from the entire Universe or apart from Creator/Apportioner. The awareness that I do not stand and cannot ever stand alone but that I am at one with or part of the whole; this is the death of self-centeredness or selfishness and cowardice. This is the birth of selflessness and courage. This is atonement as I understand it, speaking in my context as a Chickamauga Cherokee traditional. Simply put, atonement, to me, is not making payment or accepting payment supposedly made by another for my “sins,” nor is it speaking words of apology in hope of forgiveness. Rather atonement involves coming to the awareness and living my life in the awareness that I am one of the people and at one with the entirety of creation and Creator. This doesn’t mean apologies are never in order, but without awareness of unity, apologies are often just empty words, or worse yet, further acts of aggression.

74. Doesn’t this idea of “oneness of all that is” result in the extinguishment of self?

In the Cherokee way of understanding, the Old Ones say each person has four souls or, as I understand the concept, four aspects of or layers to the essence of that which makes us who we are and intricately connects us with all that is. We could go further and say that each person has 400 souls, four million souls, four trillion souls. Everyone and everything has a soul / is a soul; the same applies to each cell of the body, to each molecule of each cell and to each atom of each molecule. And, who is to say that each atom is not, itself, a universe – infinity of souls.

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

Each cell of the body is an individual, although each individual cell is interdependent within the unity of the body. The soul of the body overarches all that the body contains. Each ethnicity of persons has a soul. Each species of persons has a soul. The Earth has a soul, overarching all her aspects, all she contains. The Sun has a soul. Each planet, moon and star has a soul. Each galaxy has a soul. The Universe has a soul. And, who is to say that the Universe, as we perceive it, is not a single atom or molecule contained in a body so immense as to be incomprehensible from our point of view.

At every level – within the body, within the Earth, within the Universe – there is community, unity in diversity, harmony. That which breaks the harmony creates imbalance; this is the very definition of disease.

Within the body, when white blood cells begin attacking, destroying and consuming red blood cells, this is called leukemia; when a group of skin cells decides it is superior to all other tissue and begins building its own empire at the expense of the entire body, this is melanoma. These conditions are fatal to the entire body, unless something happens to arrest or destroy the cancer and restore the balance.

Everyone and everything has a soul. Everyone and everything has a purpose that is important to the maintenance of the health and wholeness of the entirety. The purpose of one may not be completely or totally understood or comprehended by another, so the practice of respect and careful non- interference is essential for the maintenance of harmony and balance.

Imperialistic societies talk or theorize about individual human rights or freedom while, in practice, violating individual rights and severely limiting or eliminating individual autonomy and freedom. If one looks at American Indian societies, especially at what is passed down orally from the times before colonization, one sees this overarching awareness that nothing and no one exists outside of relationship. At the same time, American Indian societies have always placed great value on individual autonomy. Traditionally, and especially in the old days, decisions were made by consensus of the entire community when possible. In the event that consensus was impossible to achieve, the right of individual dissent was respected. Harmony or unity in diversity characterized by love and respect: that is the key concept. That is the way the Universe is ordered and the best way, the only healthy way for the ordering of human relationships with one another and with the entirety.

75. What are your views on syncretism?

To begin with, it helps to define what we are talking about. Webster defines syncretism simply as “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”. Fundamentalist or conservative Christians who do not approve of the practice of syncretism within previously missionized indigenous people groups say,

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

"Syncretism is the subtle attempt to integrate biblical truth and faith in Christ with non-biblical native religious beliefs, practices and forms. The result [they say] is an adulteration of biblical truth and the birth of another gospel."

What these same fundamentalist or conservative Christians are unwilling to admit is that Christianity, in all its variant forms, evolved and continues to evolve through the process of syncretism. Judaism also evolved and continues to evolve through the process of syncretism. It seems that syncretism is only a problem when it is practiced by previously missionized indigenous people who are trying to reclaim at least some of their indigenous spirituality. So, the real issue may be racism or ethnocentrism.

There is certainly a place to avoid syncretism. We do not want to let our cultures, our sacred traditions be eclipsed by the ways of those who came to kill us. We don't want to join in the cultural genocide of our own people. We do not want to mess around with sacred things or take any of the ways lightly.

At the same time, for those of our people who have been missionized, and this would include most if not all indigenous people in the Americas, a degree of syncretism may be needful in order to bridge across the river of exclusivist Christian superstition and fear that would keep many from reclaiming their own Native cultures or indigenous spiritualities.

In all honesty, we should be willing to admit that no spirituality develops in a vacuum. All spiritualities are syncretistic to one degree or another.

76. There are Christian Indians who have grown up on reservations and who maintain that Indian spirituality is at best unwholesome superstition and at worst demonic or satanic practice. What do you say to that?

A common stereotype concerning Indians raised on reservations is that they are all knowledgeable concerning the cultures and traditions of their own people. However, the long, colonizing history of Christian missions being what it is, there are today, many Indians living on reservations in the United States and on reserves in Canada whose knowledge of their own peoples’ cultures and traditions have come to them primarily from white missionaries and Christianized Indians severely prejudiced against those cultures and traditions. Just being brought up on an Indian reservation or reserve does not necessarily qualify one to speak knowledgeably or insightfully about the culture, traditions or indigenous spirituality of the tribe or tribes on that reservation or reserve.

In his day, Dakota physician Ohiyesa or Charles Alexander Eastman, had his own take on this issue. In The Soul of the Indian, first published by the University of Nebraska Press in 1911, Eastman wrote….

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

The religion of the Indian is the last thing about him that the man of another race will ever understand.

First, the Indian does not speak of these deep matters so long as he believes in them, and when he has ceased to believe he speaks inaccurately and slightingly.

Second, even if he can be induced to speak, the racial and religious prejudice of the other stands in the way of his sympathetic comprehension.

I have personally witnessed many examples of the behavior described by Ohiyesa. Often, Christianized Indian people will say what they think white Christians want to hear. The saddest thing is, the internalization of racist ideology and its resultant self-hatred which often precede religious proselytism, seemingly cause many Christianized Indian people to actually believe the false and derogatory descriptions of their own peoples’ indigenous spiritualities which are then relayed to others.

77. Do you think pre-Columbian American Indian spiritual understandings might be understood as a type of Old Testament, given in preparation for the eventual coming of the story of Jesus Christ?

When I was in seminary, I wrote a paper in which I made this very same observation. The professor loved it. I could not believe the old dodge that pre- contact Indian spiritualities were satanic or demonic, so comparing them to Old Testament spirituality was like saying: It has value but is incomplete or insufficient in and of itself. To be truthful, even as I wrote that paper way back then, I was not entirely comfortable with the stance I was taking. Also, at that time, I really didn’t know enough about Cherokee spirituality or any other indigenous spirituality to be making any such observations.

I’ve learned a thing or two since then. I am a traditional Chickamauga Cherokee medicine society member. This came after long years of apprenticeship and mentoring, much more difficult than seminary. I am now also the Fire Keeper of the Daksi Grounds, a traditional Chickamauga practice grounds where the Sacred Fire is kept along with the annual ceremonies/celebrations of our people.

How can I communicate this in a way that might be understandable? Imagine a traditional Cherokee spiritual helper with very little knowledge of Christianity. That’s actually hard to imagine, but try to imagine it anyway. Let’s say this person has read the Gospel of Mark and maybe Luke and parts of John, but that’s all. Now, let’s say this person makes a statement about Christianity – something like this: “Christians have a foundational understanding of Creator. Creator-Offspring has come to them in their time of need, even as we have also been visited by Creator-Offspring in our time of need, but they have not received

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis the Sacred Fire. They are a pre-Sacred Fire people. All we need to do is to take the Sacred Fire to the Christians, and their spirituality and understanding of Creator will be complete.”

To begin with, how do you think Christians would feel about a statement like that?

Now, a knowledgeable Christian might counter by saying something like, “Oh, but we do have the Sacred Fire. The Sacred Fire was given to us on the Day of Pentecost. Since that day, we have had the Sacred Fire burning in our hearts.”

At that, the Cherokee spiritual helper might nod his head and say, “Oh, that’s good. And, what’s more, now that I think of it, our own tradition says that all people have the Sacred Fire burning in their hearts, so why wouldn’t you? Creator has done right by all her/his children.”

The Old Testament / New Testament way of thinking comes of Christians being a people of the Book. Although Cherokees have been writing things down for thousands of years before the time of Sequoyah, we are not people of the Book; we are people of the Fire. The Sacred Fire is the New Testament and more to us, just as the Sacred Pipe is the New Testament and more to traditional Lakotas. Creator has left no abandoned orphans in the earth.

78. Do you think there is now or will ever be an indigenous American Indian Christianity?

I don’t know about “indigenous Christianity”, but there is and has always been indigenous Christology, although it has not generally been called that. What I am saying is that each and every indigenous culture everywhere already has, within itself, that which is said about how Creator blesses, is imaged in, connected with and/or united with creation. This is my working definition of Christology, a definition which takes into account more ancient, pre-Christian definitions of the Greek word “Christ”.

If this response piques your interest, you may want to read a paper entitled “Contextual Indigenous Cultural Christology” by Robert Francis, October 2009. The paper is available for download on the Mid American Indian Fellowships website www.midamericanindianfellowships.org

79. Some prominent Evangelical Christian speakers and authors have said the next Great Awakening will begin with American Indians. What are your thoughts about this?

When Evangelical Christians speak in terms of the “next Great Awakening,” I suppose they are looking for something in the future similar to the phenomena referred to as “Great Awakenings” that occurred among European Americans in

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis the 18th century. However, as I look back at the tangible results of those “Great Awakenings,” it seems to me that the English Colonists and new white Americans of those days where primarily awakened in their resolve to steal more Indian land and kill more Indians. Will there be another “Great Awakening” comparable to these? I certainly hope not. Even if colonized Indians lead it, those of us working to reclaim or restore our cultures may not survive another “Great Awakening” like that.

On the other hand, from my observations, people all over the Earth, are waking up to an awareness of relatedness and unity of all that is and returning to their indigenous roots. Those who are looking for another Angry-God and Hell-Fire Great Awakening may well be blind to a real or genuine awakening occurring in their midst. Unless they are willing to take off their blinders and unstop their ears, they may be left behind as Creator does something truly great in the Earth.

80. Do you think there is still a place for white people in American Indian ministry?

Whether are not there is a place for white people in “American Indian ministry” depends on the view of ministry. My feeling is that white people taking on leadership roles in American Indian communities or usurping the peoples’ own indigenous, traditional leadership, spiritual or otherwise, has always been out of place, as such actions serve to promote or encourage ideas and attitudes of theological dependency or the notion that Indians need white people to tell us how to properly think about, talk about and relate to Creator. A ministerial focus on proselytizing or changing the religion or spirituality of a people is definitely out of place, being invasive and violent action serving to rip apart communities and destroy cultures.

On the other hand, when ministry is viewed in terms of careful listening followed by action to help with what people are already doing to help themselves; well, I think there remains a place for that.

Occasionally, well meaning non-Indian men or women will approach me saying, "I have a burden for the Indians." This statement most often comes from those I do not know and have never met before. It is generally followed with an offer to come to “teach the little Indian children” or to come with me to “preach to the Indians.” When I do not immediately jump at such an offer, the person may be somewhat taken aback. The following poem is an attempt to express the thoughts and feelings I have when I hear these words.

The Burden by Robert Francis 2003

A burden for the Indians, you say

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis you have a burden for the Indians and anxiously wait for my reply thinking your words warm my heart. Instead they send a chill down my spine.

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians. Be my Indian guide; take me to your people. Be my Tonto; I'll be your Lone Ranger. I'll be your Custer; you be my White-Man-Owns-Him.

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians. You've always dreamed of this: A two-week adventure with lifetime bragging rights, Indians left to live or die with the consequences.

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians. Have you, your church, your denomination ever opposed the slaughter, the theft of land, the termination of our ways of life?

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians. Is this the burden of Columbus and Smith, of Bradford and Amherst and Sevier, of Wayne and Harrison and Dawes?

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians to kill the Indian but save the man? The only good Indian is the one who died or behaves as one already dead.

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians. Is this the burden of the gospel of greed that comes calling itself civilization preaching the salvation of selfishness?

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians. Is this the burden of a cannibal culture prowling around, looking for one to devour, crossing earth and sea for a single convert?

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians. Who am I to pass judgment on another? But, you will know them by their fruits. Grapes will never grow on sawbriers.

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians. Did Creator lay such a burden on your heart? "My burden is light," the Great One says. "You are the burden and I will cast you off."

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians. The white man's burden lays a heavy load that bends and breaks the backs of all for whom he is burdened.

A burden for the Indians, you say you have a burden for the Indians, and you anxiously wait for my reply. GET OVER IT! I say; then maybe we Indians can get over 500 years of your burden lain on us.

For those non-Indians who feel they have a burden for the Indian: The "white- man's burden” has consistently made things worse for American Indian people. There are those who may be thinking that what they are feeling inside is different. I hope it is. To these, I say, Are you willing to help without seeking to control? Are you willing to listen before you speak? Are you willing to observe before you ask questions? Are you willing to acknowledge the neediness of your own people and of your own self as well as the neediness or "plight" of the Indians? Are you willing to acknowledge that the healing of your people and the healing of other peoples, including American Indian peoples, is intricately bound together? Are you willing to understand that healing for Indian peoples does not mean Indian people becoming more like you? Are you willing to lay aside the idols of civil religion and denominational or religious dogma that you may hear the voice of the Spirit and act on what you hear? Are you honest enough to lay aside all claims to exclusive ownership of ultimate truth? If you have answered "Yes" to, at least, some of these questions and especially to that last one, there is hope.

However, before you start raising funds to relocate yourself “among the Indians,” consider this: American Indian spiritual helpers live in poverty on a fraction of what white ministers or white missionaries to Indians are paid. This disparity remains regardless of the level of education achieved by Indian helpers. If you really want to help American Indians, encourage your church to get involved in

120 Questions Chapter 2: Religious or Spiritual Questions By Robert Francis financially helping an American Indian helper who is working within the culture of his/her own people. To make this a reciprocal, helping relationship, encourage your church to invite that person to speak in your church periodically (not five- minutes before worship to explain the "plight" of the poor Indian but the whole worship time to meaningfully share in ways that will help the people of your church).

Bible References to explain some phrases in the poem above: Matthew 23:15; Romans 14:4; Matthew 7:16; Matthew 11:30; Jeremiah 23:33