About Native America

Here at the Vineyard, we want to grow in honoring and loving our Native American/First Nations/Indigenous brothers and sisters well. To do that, we believe that it’s important to develop a framework for understanding the lives, experiences, and worldview of the Native American community. As we do this, we’re learning what it means to be the Body of Christ, because the Body of Christ is not monocultural, but rather multicultural. This means taking on the intentional, humble, and oftentimes challenging posture of a student.

ETHNOCENTRISM

Something that is experienced as a person crosses over from one culture to another is something called “ethnocentrism.” Ethnocentrism is a “view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it” (Parrillo, 2009, p. 14). As a result, reactions and judgments are made about a different culture as it is based on one’s own value system. There may be underlying attitudes that fuel ethnocentrism. Two of those attitudes may be: ignorance (“I don’t know enough to care”) and apathy (“I don’t care enough to know”).  If you are a part of our Loving Native America efforts at Vineyard Gilbert, the assumption is that your desire is to care. So, this experience may be about learning accurate information, so that you can be more effectively loving, caring, and at home in your interactions with (and even thinking and talking about) our Native American and First Nations brothers and sisters.
Go Deeper
Reference:
Parrillo, V. N. (2009). Strangers to these shores: Race and ethnic relations in the United States (9th ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Reflection Questions:
Can you recall a time in your life when your perspective was changed regarding another culture or tradition?

Are you able to identify some current areas or ideas of ethnocentrism in your thinking?

DISPELLING STEREOTYPES

For many who have never experienced life on a reservation, there are positive and negative notions of the lives of Native Americans. There are 574 federally recognized, and 400 non-federally recognized Native American tribes and they are all different (Federally Recognized Indian Tribes and Resources for Native Americans, 2022). Before these tribes were grouped together as one group, they considered each other as different groups (or even nations), and they even warred against one another as nations often do. For instance, the Navajo and Hopi tribes have had long standing strife connected to the way that the U.S. government distributed land. Even the Apache bands within Arizona and New Mexico are much different (with their own language dialects, customs, cultures, etc.). If you have worked with another tribe (Ojibwe, Cherokee, etc.) that does not mean that you have a clear idea of what the White Mountain Apache or a community in the Navajo Nation are like. Some of our experiences and comments made here are specifically regarding the Navajo (who call themselves “Diné”: meaning “the people”), and the White Mountain Apache that reside on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, with some insights from others, and still, these are generalizations and do not apply to every White Mountain Apache or Navajo tribal member. The best way to dispel stereotypes when dealing with a people group is to envision/respect each person as an individual, and to allow that person to define his or her culture for him or herself. You might talk to someone who is Navajo and come to find out that they were raised in Utah with their aunt and they might identify with some parts of Navajo culture and reject others. Dispelling inaccurate ideas about any group is a starting place, but the true value in this is to come with a humble posture wanting to learn, and as we hold that posture and long-held inaccuracies are confronted, we can begin to be open to each individual’s value as a disparate, unique part of the group as a whole. With this said, the following are stereotypes that people can sometimes bring with them into interactions with Native American individuals and communities.
Go Deeper
Reference:
Federally Recognized Indian Tribes and Resources for Native Americans. (2022). Retrieved May 10, 2022, from usa.gov: https://www.usa.gov/tribes

Reflection Questions:
What are some ideas that you hold about Native America that you know are stereotypes?

COMMONLY HELD STEREOTYPES

Everyone is well-off and happily living in teepees on the reservations.
First, while some of the plains tribes did live in teepees, the Apache lived in wickiups, which is housing made out of branches and grass. The Navajo traditionally lived in hogans (eight-sided structures built with mud or wood) – and it is very common to see hogans as you drive through the Navajo Nation (though now they are constructed with more modern materials). Now in Native lands, it’s common to see families live in everything from trailers and modular homes to governmentally built housing. Second, early on in U.S. history, the idea of reservations was to cause Native Americans to be “out of sight, out of mind” and to assimilate them into ‘modern’ colonial culture. What this caused, however, was a dependency on the government that quickly resulted in poverty on a societal level. However, with this said, they are in fact modern now. They watch T.V., they love movies, and many teens and adults have smartphones just like you. Most (though not all) live in homes that have running water and electricity, and some families have computers and Internet access. Teens and most adults wear the same clothing that people in mainstream culture wear and drive vehicles for transportation.
They have a lot of money because of the casinos
First of all, it must be said: not all tribes have casinos. As of Q4 2021, 250 tribes (out of 547 federally recognized) operate 515 tribal casinos or other gaming locations across the country (American Gaming Association, 2022). With that said, the casino ‘model’ only works in certain situations. The best scenario is if the tribe has a small population and the casino is well placed. For instance, the Fort Apache Reservation is a larger population tribe, and their reservation is in the mountains, three and a half hours from Phoenix (the nearest city center), two hours from Flagstaff and one hour from Interstate 40. The tourism is seasonal to the reservation and off the beaten path. Although they may generate income from the casino and their ski resort (Sunrise Ski Resort), much (or all) of it can be easily lost in the overall tribal economy. All functions within the community are run by the tribe (i.e. gas stations, maintenance, waste removal, etc.), so when money is gained in one area, it is used in another area so that they can take care of community members.

When it comes to casinos, many tribes learned hard lessons where the presence of casinos did not help lives, but rather, they introduced the dangers of addiction into the lives of their people. At its best, some tribes have been able to leverage the business of the casinos to reduce local unemployment and create opportunities for their communities and their youth.

Reference:
American Gaming Association. (2022, May). Tribal gaming [One-pager]. https://www.americangaming.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Tribal-Gaming-One-Pager.pdf
They get everything for free (housing, health care, etc.)
Healthcare: When it comes to healthcare, it is true that individual tribal members can receive many health services for free. This healthcare is provided as a service to many Native American tribes, negotiated as part of a treaty settlement with the United States government. For most tribes, this means that a registered tribal member can receive free healthcare at their local Indian Health Services (IHS). This system, while providing crucial services to many youths, families and elders, does have some shortcomings. For this reason, tribal members who work for the tribe or in other governmental or private companies off the reservation seek health insurance benefits for their families like most working American families. The health benefits provided to tribal employees are like the insurance other governmental employees have. This differs from the free healthcare provided to all registered tribal members because the IHS system limits beneficiaries to only the providers available at the IHS clinic, while the tribal insurance operates on a preferred provider network like many private insurance plans, allowing beneficiaries to seek healthcare from providers they select within their network. In Arizona, if tribal members do not have health benefits through their jobs, they may also apply for AHCCCS (which is the Arizona Medicaid option for low-income individuals and families) or use the Indian Health Service clinics.
 
Housing: Tribal members are also able to apply for government subsidized housing. For instance, the White Mountain Apache tribe has its own housing authority division, which is run much like the government housing authorities in various states and often found in urban centers. According to government regulations both on and off reservations, applicants for subsidized housing must meet certain income requirements to qualify for reduced-price housing. In most cases, the family unit who qualifies must pay 1/3 of their combined monthly income for housing. This is the case whether the person has a job or if they are living on government assistance such as disability benefits, unemployment benefits, social security, or TANF (Temporary Aid for Needy Families, a national needs-based income assistance program). One challenge with government subsidized housing both on and off the reservation in areas with high poverty and unemployment rates is that there is not enough housing for everyone who qualifies and applies. For the White Mountain Apache tribe, this results in long waiting lists for housing, which may be one contributing factor to overcrowding in homes on the reservation.
The reservations are desolate "wastelands" that the natives were put on.
It is true that in the land grab of colonialism, very often the most resource rich lands were sought after and 'taken' from tribes. From attempted genocides of certain communities to treaties which were made (then broken), the method of taking these lands have left an indelible trauma and brokenness on indigenous communities.

With that said, while it is true that some tribes were relocated from their lush homes to barren areas (such as the Cherokee from Georgia to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears), some like the White Mountain Apache live on ancestral land which is 1.7 million acres of beautiful canyons, mountains, aspen trees, and ponderosa pines - with a vibrant Tribal Game and Fish department, and even their own species of trout native to their land called the Apache Trout. The Navajo ancestral lands are located within and near the four sacred Mountains of Blanca Peak in Colorado, Mt. Taylor in New Mexico, San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, and Hesperus Peak in Colorado. This, of course, encompasses great geological diversity.

While the land on many reservations has a unique beauty, it is often found to be very different from other places in the U.S., which is often connected to the economic disparity of many conditions on reservation lands. The lives of the communities that live there have a way of life that are often devoid of the conveniences that the majority culture often takes for granted. In visiting a reservation, outsiders may feel like tribal members are living in lack, but those living there may feel no such thing, and may feel that they have what the need.

They’ve been repaid for their injustices…why don’t they just move on?
First, we must recognize the extent of the injustice. For many, we are talking about systematic forced removal from land (that were their homes), and attempted genocide of many tribes of people. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Indian children were forcibly abducted from their families by government agents, sent to boarding schools (which were government funded and often church-run) hundreds of miles away, and beaten, starved, or otherwise abused when they spoke their Native language (National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, n.d.). Digging into Native American history is incredibly eye-opening, sobering, and heart-breaking. The more you research and learn, the more one can understand how complex the wounding has been. One does not just ‘move on.’

Over the years, and even most recently, there have been indigenous voices that have arisen - from the local community level to the national federal governmental level. They are advocating for, and working toward, the change that their communities need. Part of ‘loving well’ for us at the Vineyard is to come alongside Native leaders, to encourage, support, and amplify their voices.

Reference:
National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. (n.d.). U.S. Indian boarding school history. https://boardingschoolhealing.org/us-indian-boarding-school-history/ 

Important Concepts to Understand

The Doctrine of Discovery
The Doctrine of Discovery is a series of papal bulls (a public decree, charter, or letter patent issued by the Catholic Church's pope) written between 1450 and 1493 that gave European nations the right to claim lands not ruled by Christian rulers. The doctrine justified the colonization of Africa, the enslavement of its people, and Christopher Columbus's landing in the Americas. Put simply (in the context of Native America), it was the belief that because European nations were Christian, they believed God had given them the right to take Indigenous land and replace Indigenous cultures with their own.
Manifest Destiny
Related to the idea of the Doctrine of Discovery is the concept of Manifest Destiny. While the Doctrine of Discovery provided the legal and theological foundation for European colonization, Manifest Destiny became the American political and cultural expression of those same assumptions in the nineteenth century.

As Theologian and Constitutional Historian, Mark Charles put it in his book Unsettling Truths, which he co-authored with Soong-Chan Rah, he argues: Manifest Destiny was not a departure from the Doctrine of Discovery, rather it was its American continuation.

Manifest Destiny argued that the United States had a providential mission to expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Journalist John L. O'Sullivan coined the phrase in 1845, describing America's "manifest destiny" to overspread the continent.

So, instead of using the Catholic language of “Christian kingdoms have the right to claim this land,” Americans increasingly said, “God has chosen America to expand westward.” So, the theology became nationalism (which is still embedded in U.S. culture to today). This ideology justified the removal of Native nations, broken treaties, military conquest (and even attempted genocide), reservation systems, assimilation policies, and the seizure of millions of acres of Indigenous land.

The result of this is that, as historian David Treuer puts it, Manifest Destiny became less of an abstract idea, and more of a series of concrete policies. Policies that resulted in forced removals, treaty violations, boarding schools, land allotment, cultural suppression, and economic restructuring.

But through it all, as Treuer put it in his book The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, that while many histories steeped in Manifest Destiny ideology may unintentionally imply that Indigenous history ended around 1890 - Native nations survived. Native governments endured. Native cultures adapted. Indigenous people remain active participants in American history.

Understanding this history is essential, not only to interpret the past accurately but also to engage honestly with the ongoing relationships between Indigenous nations, the United States, and the Christian church.

As Native American theologian Richard Twiss puts it: Manifest Destiny demonstrated what happens when “Empire” becomes confused with God's Kingdom. The Gospel of Jesus is different, and antithetical to, the colonial systems that carried Christianity into Indigenous communities. We must remember that the Kingdom of God advances through the self-giving way of Jesus, not through political conquest or cultural domination. Native theologians like Mark Charles, Richard Twiss, and Terry Wildman invite Christians to disentangle the gospel from colonial assumptions while affirming the dignity, agency, and enduring witness of Indigenous peoples.

Reference:
Charles, M., & Rah, S.-C. (2019). Unsettling truths: The ongoing, dehumanizing legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery. InterVarsity Press.

Treuer, D. (2019). The heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the present. Riverhead Books.