Joy Harjo
from A Map to the Next World

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it
was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the
altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

“Loyalty to the Church of England ran deep.  By the 1620s the broad boundaries of the puritan movement had been defined for fifty years by opposition to ‘popery’ and ‘separation’.  The fragile and incomplete nature of the Reformation in England made it vital to witness against what keen Protestants called ‘popery’ – traces of the Catholic past not yet purged from the English Church, or any hint of a Catholic revival…Fear and polemic occupied the ground between Protestant and Catholic; religion and politics went hand in hand.” – Moore

 “For the profoundly conservative Puritans, change was sin.  Other writers have extended the thought, saying that ‘sin’ was used by the Puritans to keep deviants (including Indians) in their place; those who challenged the status quo in any way were branded as sinners against God, doomed to the fires of hell.” – RK

A main premise of America is freedom of religion, but if from the beginning those who have beliefs different from the majority have been kicked out and taken over, how does that legacy impact how our country (and church) works today?

“For, to the native and the settling peoples, swamps meant quite different things.  Swamps to the natives represented an essential wild area, ‘the abode of owls’ and other revered animals….To the settlers they represented the hiding place of the devil, the unreclaimable and useless land where wolves waited.” -RK

We humans are so fearful.  We don’t know what they’ll say or do.  We don’t know what words will fall out of their mouths, what beliefs or thoughts will corrupt us, influence us, our kids.

So we must guard against it.  We must create laws, and by the virtue of our creating them, they are good and true and from God.  We are the ones with the power, the guns, the land, the laws.  Simply because we say we are.  We are like Tom Hanks creating fire on a deserted island.

“ For the Puritans, the concept of a people in harmony with nature implied a people in league with the dark forces….having found salvation for themselves in denial of worldly pleasures and in hard work, the Puritans were appalled at the ‘indolent’ ways of the natives.”  -RK

What if we looked at other cultures with respect and a desire to learn from and understand?  Spirituality was important to the Pilgrims and the Indians.  How are they different and the same?  Does being different equal being wrong?  Could they, can we co-exist?

 “The Wampanoag believed that one Great Spirit had created the world.  They prayed to this spirit called Kiehtan.  They also believed that each living creature and part of Earth has its own spirit.  Wampanoag respected these spirits.” – Rosinsky

“The term ‘Great Spirit’ places the Creator at the upper end of a continuum in which many beings have a spirit, and some spirits are stronger than others.” – DL

The problem wasn’t that the Native American’s beliefs were different.  It was that the settlers decided what was legitimate and what was not.  The settlers came in and declared the indigenous’ beliefs to be wrong and sinful.  And from that base, there continues to be a strong contingency in this country to declare white conservative religious beliefs the only valid ones, and form laws around that belief.

Books/Resources

The Red King’s Rebellion: Racial Politics in New England 1675-1678 (RK)
Daily Life of Native Americans from Post-Columbian through Nineteenth-Century America  (DL)
Pilgrims: New World Settlers and the Call of Home (Moore)
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Native American Religion
An Algonquian Year : The Year According to the Full Moon

Pequot

Nickommoh!: A Thanksgiving Celebration
The Pequot Tribe
The Pequots
Where the Great Hawk Flies

Wampanoag

Tapenum’s Day: A Wampanoag Indian Boy In Pilgrim Times
The Wampanoag: People of the First Light
Clambake: A Wampanoag Tradition
People of the Breaking Day
The Wampanoag
The Wampanoag and Their History (Rosinsky)

Part 1 – The First Thanksgiving and the Myth of America
Part 2 – The Myth of America – Columbus, Christ-Bearer
Part 3 – The Myth of America – Jamestown – The Wrong Story To Tell
Part 4 – Pilgrims – God’s Provision at the Expense of Other People
Part 5 – Myth of America – Biased History Lesson
Part 6 – The Mayflower Compact – for God and King and White America
Part 7 – The First Thanksgiving – for a Massacre
Part 8 – The First Thanksgiving – Fears, Power, and Privilege
Part 9 – Colonialism – A History Lesson with Skittles
Part 10 – Myth of the First Thanksgiving – Other Festivals and Thanksgiving

This series is available as a 40 page pdf, giving an introductory look at settler colonialism as it relates to the founding of America.  Discusses Columbus, Jamestown, Pilgrims and Native Americans and includes 4 lessons to teach the topics to kids.
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