00:00:06.810 - 00:00:16.850

Um And so today, I, I kind of wanna um jump around a little bit and talk about . Um So some of the things that I threw , I sort of just sort of um volleyed uh

00:00:16.860 - 00:00:31.540

a ball out into the audience talking about decolonization. And I said we need to decolonize everything and, and I do mean everything. I think we need to decolonize uh politics. We need to decolonize our

00:00:31.550 - 00:00:49.660

schools, our universities, our Bible schools, the Bible, our churches, we just need to decolonize literally the hell out of everything uh and get all that stuff out of there because there is um um

00:00:49.670 - 00:01:03.480

as as Doctor Town said yesterday or yeah, early her first, her first lecture, um everyone has bias and I don't have bias because I just know that uh Nutley is the best. So I don't

00:01:03.490 - 00:01:15.100

have, it's not a bias, it's just the truth. We talked about truth yesterday as well. And I think every single one of us are a little bit ethnocentric. You know, we, we

00:01:15.110 - 00:01:26.890

are even you talk to somebody from maybe Dallas or Houston compare Austin. There can be a little bit of, it's not ethnocentrism, but it's, it's sort of like, well, it's maybe competitiveness of

00:01:26.900 - 00:01:36.270

, um, uh, and bias of who's the best and stuff. And you talk about sports teams . I won't even go there with Americans. Oh , my goodness. We'll be like, we'll,

00:01:36.280 - 00:01:49.250

we'll, uh, have some foc ups happening here . Um, but the ethnocentrism that's, um, it, it can, it can hurt others as well and that's the painful, painful part for indigenous

00:01:49.260 - 00:02:06.330

people. So, um, and it's, it's really hard to talk about indigenous history for me because it is uh re traumatizing. It is uh it's something that um yeah, it's, it's something for

00:02:06.340 - 00:02:16.620

every indigenous person. Um I talked to one of my um friends who's a pastor and a counselor. She's a SOTO from SOTO first nation in Saskatchewan. And we were talking about trauma and indigenous people and

00:02:16.630 - 00:02:28.020

she said, if you're indigenous, you have trauma , period. And I was just so shocked and she told me that maybe 20 years ago and I was like, oh OK. And, and so

00:02:28.030 - 00:02:43.720

I started sort of exploring some of the um trauma that I had inside and, you know, you know, lots of stuff, excuse me. Um And it goes way back so we can go all

00:02:43.730 - 00:02:57.130

the way back to Columbus for crying out loud. And uh and when um Columbus landed on our shores there, um and, and he, he saw our people didn't find, didn't discover we weren't discovered

00:02:57.140 - 00:03:09.880

, we were already here. We kind of discovered him and we always say he was looking for India and spices and somehow he found us and he thought he found um us. So our India. So

00:03:09.890 - 00:03:21.530

he called us Indians. And there's a really old joke. It's from the seventies, there was a uh indigenous comedian named Charlie. I lost his last name and he used to always say Columbus was looking

00:03:21.540 - 00:03:31.130

for India. So he called us Indians. We're just glad he wasn't looking for Turkey. So it was a very old joke. And my son who I think when my son was 13, he was

00:03:31.140 - 00:03:42.880

like, you, we'd be called Turks, then not Turkeys. I was like, ok. Yeah , ok, you're right. Fine. It was a joke from the seventies. So, but he

00:03:42.890 - 00:03:54.410

, so Columbus finds us and, and there are , there's lots of writing from Columbus and others about how he found us or, or how he uh how he, what he thought about us. And

00:03:54.420 - 00:04:04.290

one of the things that he said was um some of the things that he said were, were childish , unpretentious, um uh sort of pliable. Like he says, we could, we could conquer these

00:04:04.300 - 00:04:16.150

people, like, like that, those were kind of the ideas. Um So then when they, um when they got to know us a little bit , then they started having these debates and um with

00:04:16.160 - 00:04:32.400

the, the um the Popes and everything back in Europe about whether or not we indigenous people here had a soul or not. And that was um a really big question. It was a really big debate

00:04:32.410 - 00:04:46.620

for them. We had no idea. Of course , these things were happening. We were just hanging out and supposedly feeding them turkeys and having happy Thanksgivings , uh which uh not no native person that I

00:04:46.630 - 00:04:59.130

know really, really celebrates the, that the, the American story of Thanksgiving. We celebrate Thanksgiving as a victory of survival. That's how we celebrate. So, um uh so these debates were going on

00:04:59.140 - 00:05:13.730

about whether or not we had a soul. And uh the idea was that if we had um if we didn't have a soul, then um we could just be exterminated. And if we did have a

00:05:13.740 - 00:05:27.670

soul, then, then they would have to, they would be obligated to send missionaries. So all of the debates ended and they decided we did have a soul. And so then they started the second

00:05:27.680 - 00:05:44.350

way of extermination and that was um by uh assimilation and um all, all of that and it just started this whole uh you manifest destiny, the doctrine of discovery. I don't have time to go into

00:05:44.360 - 00:05:53.730

those things. But if you write those down and have a look at those, they're pretty, they're , it's a pretty big deal. There's um a really great book by um uh I want doctor discovered

00:05:53.740 - 00:06:02.460

anyway, I, I can't go into all of that. I don't have time. But so those tho those were like the, um, you know , we talk about Columbus being sort of one of

00:06:02.470 - 00:06:10.250

, he's hailed as a hero. And, um , I, in one of my talks years ago , somebody came up to me and, and they were like, you know, Columbus was a,

00:06:10.510 - 00:06:21.180

like an expert navigator, how he couldn't have been lost and he was really offended that I had sort of challenged his, his hero. And actually I just heard from Crystal this morning about a book called

00:06:21.860 - 00:06:40.600

Columbus and other cannibals, cannibals. I was like , whoa, I gotta read that. Um And so that started, I, I believe that's when it started of this whole um systemic racism against indigenous

00:06:40.610 - 00:06:51.770

people. And the whole idea that indigenous people were uh that our ways, our customs, our, our traditions, our beliefs, our spirituality, our values, everything was sort of called into question.

00:06:51.920 - 00:07:06.560

And also um was what we were othered. And also we were sort of relegated, not, not only second class citizens, but uh but way um way worse in um Virginia. I, I went

00:07:06.570 - 00:07:19.840

years ago in um Virginia and I met um some black Indians. Oh my goodness, the most beautiful people ever. And they told me some history there . Excuse me. Sorry, I do have this

00:07:19.850 - 00:07:29.930

sort of, ever since I had COVID a couple of years ago, I've had this weird lung thing . So forgive me, that's why I don't wear the lapel because I can back away and not be

00:07:29.940 - 00:07:41.460

rude. And do all of that. Um But years ago I in Virginia and they told me some , um just some shocking, some more shocking history and it's sort of like I just wanna go and

00:07:41.470 - 00:07:53.120

not learn anymore because then I'll just be, you know, ignorance is bliss. I, I don't , I don't believe that actually, but uh it disheartened me because they said that um to be um

00:07:53.130 - 00:08:01.500

considered black, they had the one drop policy. So if you were, if you had one drop of black blood, you were black, you could and then um and then you could be entered into

00:08:01.510 - 00:08:13.830

the economy, the slave economy. But for indigenous people, you had to prove that three out of four of your grandparents were indigenous. So that's a lot more than one drop of blood. And that's

00:08:13.840 - 00:08:24.720

how you had to prove that you were indigenous. So this was happening at the exact same time in history for African American people and indigenous people and, and it was economic right? If you, if

00:08:24.730 - 00:08:35.730

you one drop and then you had to be a slave, that was, that was to help the economy. If you, if you only had um two grandparents that were indigenous, you were disenfranchised,

00:08:35.740 - 00:08:46.560

you are no longer considered an Indian and uh and , and, and you were moved off the the reservation and you lost land, you lost title, you lost rights, you lost all of that stuff

00:08:46.870 - 00:08:54.120

. And so this was a very econ and I was just sort of like the people in the rooms that were doing both of these things, they would have been in the same room talking about this stuff

00:08:54.130 - 00:09:07.910

. And I was, I'm just, I, it makes me so angry thinking about those decisions that just um took away um personhood, took away family . And then, and also um um threw people

00:09:07.920 - 00:09:24.640

into a horrendous slavery. Um It makes me so mad. So the systemic racism. Um I think it's still sort of like bizarrely riding under the radar and, and, and this is, it's tough

00:09:24.650 - 00:09:37.430

to talk about, but there's, there's things and I learned so much from Black Lives Matter. I'm so grateful for that movement and I learned the word um microaggressions from that and, and I was like

00:09:37.440 - 00:09:45.850

, oh my goodness, that happened to me all my life. People would just sort of like throw something at me and it would be like, I was sort of like, oh, and they were

00:09:45.860 - 00:09:54.900

like, oh, I didn't mean it like that and, and it, but they did and it was, it was all my life, there was stuff like that going on. Um And in and

00:09:54.910 - 00:10:07.070

so in, in my lifetime, learning about indigenous people, there's always been this the, the main story of America and Canada has been to diminish the story of indigenous people and therefore to make us so

00:10:07.080 - 00:10:16.550

far out of mind and, and sight that the land was up for grabs and there was, there was nobody living here before. So this was all free. That's the idea of manifest destiny as well

00:10:16.710 - 00:10:28.970

. And this is the uh uh this is so awful that Christians would say, well, we're like the Israelites and God gave us this land. So when smallpox wiped out millions and millions of indigenous people

00:10:28.980 - 00:10:43.300

, her most, one of the most horrific diseases , they said God did that. That was God's will for um Europeans to be able to take over uh this land. And they, they definitely thought

00:10:43.310 - 00:10:58.790

that they were the Israelites and God's chosen people in those days and that we were um we were definitely not. So you can see how that would affect people in the church, how people in the church

00:10:58.800 - 00:11:11.320

would think about indigenous people, how people in government would think about indigenous people when you have those kind of um th that kind of story just like pushing just like uh like a tsunami, pushing history forward

00:11:11.530 - 00:11:26.010

. And we're still sort of reaping those. Um uh the, the um the uh from that event , from those events, we're still reaping the effects of that. Um I've had friends of mine in

00:11:26.020 - 00:11:39.030

Canada and the United States walk into churches within the last 20 something years and speak and some and indi indigenous people are some of the most um amazing speakers . I I'm amazed at some of our elders who

00:11:39.040 - 00:11:52.680

can stand up and just share beautiful things and just , uh, right out of their heart. And anyway, um, this one, native man who was speaking in a, a church in the US

00:11:52.970 - 00:12:03.500

and somebody came up to him afterwards and said, uh, said, oh, I didn't know Indians could be Christians and, uh, and, and then of course shattered. And in this, in

00:12:03.510 - 00:12:13.780

Canada it happened again and somebody came up to a native person who had spoken at a church and they said, oh, I didn't know Indians could be smart and, and all of these sort of like

00:12:13.790 - 00:12:22.990

, and this was, you know, this is just so recent. Uh and I had a, a president of a denomination, say something similar to me and said, oh, are there others like

00:12:22.000 - 00:12:33.290

you are indigenous or Indians like smart like you? And I was just, I don't know what to say. And I think about a response like, um like, you know, a day later,

00:12:33.300 - 00:12:46.980

my response would have been like, just kidding. I'm not a violent person. I just inanimate objects . But no, it's, and it's so, it's so painful. And so there's another part of

00:12:46.990 - 00:13:00.490

um indigenous history that a lot of folks don't know about in the United States. And that is the Indian boarding schools. Uh They were started in the US by a Christian military man named Richard Pratt.

00:13:00.920 - 00:13:13.590

And the goal of these schools was um to uh well, the motto of the schools was to kill the Indian. And save the child. And they said that our, there's, there's document after document

00:13:13.600 - 00:13:24.780

after document, we have um we have museums in Canada that have just pages and pages of these letters uh between government officials and different. And they said they said the indigenous families are so tight knit,

00:13:24.310 - 00:13:35.810

they're so close. And uh there's no way that we are going to make them American and Canadian that we have to take the Children and put them in boarding schools and we have to assimilate them. And

00:13:35.820 - 00:13:48.950

that was the motto, Kill the Indian, save the child. So these Children were taken, my mom was uh taken to go to a residential school in Canada. We call them residential schools again here

00:13:48.960 - 00:13:58.870

. Uh Indian boarding schools. So I'll kind of interchange those terms. Um My mom was taken when she was four years old and uh my grandpa went to and my grandma went to a residential school.

00:14:00.180 - 00:14:09.290

Um They were threatened. Now people say, why did they let you know their Children go to these horrible schools if they were, if they were so bad, why did you keep letting them go?

00:14:09.790 - 00:14:20.890

Well, the parents were threatened. They said if you don't give us your Children, you're gonna go to jail or we'll take the Children anyway and you'll never see them again. So let us have them

00:14:20.900 - 00:14:31.540

and we'll bring them back for the summer maybe. Uh and so, and sometimes kids who weren't able to go back, spent years there and never got to go back to their family. Uh, and

00:14:31.550 - 00:14:41.250

these schools, um, uh, if you think about the British, um, uh, boarding school system, you could kind of think. Well, that's not that bad that they're gonna get an education

00:14:41.260 - 00:14:54.890

. And I've heard that all my life, at least they got an education. The majority of the , um, of the classes were catechism. They were, um, uh, church stuff. So

00:14:54.900 - 00:15:09.480

the, the, the government paid for the schools and built the schools but the, the schools were run by churches. So I, I know uh uh Catholic Anglican, there's some um there's a couple

00:15:09.490 - 00:15:26.030

of Mennonite ones. I think Presbyterians and Methodists had some and different denominations around them all over uh Canada and the United States and um in, in um in Canada we had something called the um uh well

00:15:26.040 - 00:15:37.250

, the residential school survivors, they got together and I forgot what year it was. But for 25 years, they went um from uh all the way up to the Supreme Court as high as they could

00:15:37.260 - 00:15:54.780

go. They want, they had a class action suit against the government for putting indigenous, like taking indi indigenous Children away. And in 2007, they won this um the largest class action suit in Canada

00:15:54.950 - 00:16:11.090

. They won and, but nobody found out about that. They won until 2008 when then Prime Minister apologized publicly uh from the parliament in Ottawa to residential school survivors and apologized and said it was wrong for

00:16:11.100 - 00:16:26.010

us. And the goal of the schools was not education, but the goal of the schools was assimilation . And the um uh the thing that I have said for years, this one phrase was that these

00:16:26.020 - 00:16:37.120

schools being run by the by the church, by um by priests and by nuns. They, they took the, the story of Jesus, the one of the most beautiful stories I've ever heard that the

00:16:37.130 - 00:16:49.190

creator loved us so much that uh creator came and , and wanted us to give us life. Uh And, and, and that's one of the most beautiful stories I've ever heard John 316. Um and

00:16:49.200 - 00:17:00.980

they, they took that and instead of giving it as a gift to our people and planting it in the soil and allowing it to grow indigenously, they used the gospel as a tool or a weapon of

00:17:00.990 - 00:17:15.260

assimilation. And there were um there were terrible things that happened in these schools. My um we had um events called truth and reconciliation based on what happened in South Africa. God bless them for giving uh

00:17:15.270 - 00:17:25.620

my elders these ideas. And so elders all across Canada and elders by the way, is a term of highest respect for us. If, if I say elders um that, that means, you know

00:17:25.630 - 00:17:33.860

, there, there are, there are like our royalty. So the elders all across Canada got together at these large or, or small events uh called the truth and reconciliation events. And they told the

00:17:33.870 - 00:17:51.250

stories of what happened to them in residential schools. They were punished for speaking their language, their indigenous language. Um There is um 632 I think first nations communities in Canada and there's uh like roughly between

00:17:51.260 - 00:18:03.570

Canada and the United States. There's I think about a, about 1001st nations communities. And um I stopped counting at around 600 when our family was traveling around to these places uh to just um share stories

00:18:03.580 - 00:18:18.080

and songs and build indigenous identity. Um But these , some of the punishments for speaking their language were horrific, putting needles in their tongues. And then these are little kids as, as uh as I've

00:18:18.090 - 00:18:29.510

said, um and, and worse and I'll, I'll give you a bit of a trigger warning here that an elder gave me. Uh so um an elder gave me a her story and she said that

00:18:29.520 - 00:18:40.060

I could share it. She was a really good girl and she didn't, she didn't, she was always sort of helping other uh like asked by the nuns and so on to um help the other students

00:18:40.680 - 00:18:49.200

. But one time she didn't remember what she did wrong, but they brought her into the chapel to be disciplined. And so they brought her into and this the chapel, the church and they had the

00:18:49.210 - 00:19:02.540

full down, you know, the kneeling benches. And so they brought her to a specific spot, put the um thing down the prayer bench down and they, they made her kneel as she kneeled,

00:19:02.550 - 00:19:14.990

she, she realized that there were nails sticking up from the prayer um bench. And as her knees sunk into the nails, she jumped up and she screamed and she was slapped and she was forced to

00:19:15.000 - 00:19:29.620

kneel on those nails and pray. She was a little girl. She was probably about eight years old . And to this day she carries the scars of the residential school. And this is not ancient history

00:19:29.630 - 00:19:45.390

. This is not from the 18 hundreds. This is one of my elders right now. She's um uh 77 years old. And uh and this is um and my mom passed away in uh 2020 19

00:19:45.630 - 00:19:59.070

and she was a residential school survivor as we call them in, in uh Canada. And didn't talk about the schools until probably the last couple of years of her death, which is very common for uh

00:19:59.080 - 00:20:11.730

um these boarding school survivors uh because it was so traumatic and, and so hard for them that uh they, they, it didn't almost like they blocked it or something. But there were so many that

00:20:11.740 - 00:20:22.520

did tell their stories and were grateful for their courage and they are some of my heroes because they um Canada then knew about the residential schools. And so many people, I would talk about these schools 30

00:20:22.530 - 00:20:33.200

years ago in churches and wherever I could go and talk about these things and people would come up to me, professors and, and, and pastors, elder, elder pastors who would come up to me

00:20:33.210 - 00:20:44.290

and say, are you sure this happened? Because I've never heard of it before. And it's so painful for us as indigenous people because we live this . Um And um yeah, many, many more

00:20:44.300 - 00:20:55.460

stories I could tell you about the residential school and it's so impossibly hard. Uh but I want to talk about this. So this is one of the reasons why I'm so adamant about decolonization is because the

00:20:55.470 - 00:21:11.280

residential schools uh were like so um viciously uh colonizing our Children and, and you know, we have stories after stories of stolen Children and all of these things you can read. There's a lot of material

00:21:11.290 - 00:21:22.630

as well. Um Even kids books and so on about the about the residential school. So please do a Google search on that. And uh and um because in, in the US, there's still folks

00:21:22.640 - 00:21:33.170

who tell me like they've never heard of the Indian boarding schools and, and uh and that's, and you know, your large country, way more people . I think Canada has the same population as the

00:21:33.180 - 00:21:45.180

state of California. So, uh we're um so there's a lot, a lot still, a lot of work to do to tell these truths and to get um um healing and justice to indigenous people.

00:21:45.280 - 00:21:55.620

It's happening in Canada slowly, slowly it always feels like we're doing. I, I heard Doctor Tans talk about uh a, a dance, awkwardness and a dance. And I always used to say that

00:21:55.630 - 00:22:03.790

we're, we're with indigenous people, with Canada and the United States. We're sort of in a, an awkward dance and, or with a partner who doesn't really want to dance with us. So it's

00:22:03.800 - 00:22:17.670

kind of two steps forward and three steps back and , you know, then we fall over and whatever and, and try to get up and try to do it again. So the Bible has been presented

00:22:17.680 - 00:22:30.790

to me as an indigenous person also as um a weapon or a tool of assimilation. And I was always taught, I was always felt like when I went into a church, like I uh and Richard

00:22:30.800 - 00:22:44.930

Twist, the late Richard tw, Doctor Richard Twist , he's Lakota Sekani Lakota from Rosebud um Lakota Nation . He used to always say I always felt like God loved me, but God didn't like me because

00:22:44.940 - 00:22:55.000

we're indigenous. So there was something inherently evil about us. And that's the whole thing yesterday I talked about, you know, there's a lot of darkness on your land. There's all these misconceptions about indigenous

00:22:55.010 - 00:23:07.880

people and they, they might ride in the back of every American and Canadian psyche because it's been so long that that story has been told. So there's folks, there's things that I don't know. Sometimes

00:23:07.890 - 00:23:15.290

you, I'll just talk to people and they'll say something and they'll go. Oh, I didn't, I didn't know that was in there and, and , and it's, it's, I'm so glad that

00:23:15.300 - 00:23:29.750

I can be a part of the decolonize eastern process for some people. Uh, so one of the ideas going to the, um, to the New Testament, the idea of heaven and earth and the

00:23:29.760 - 00:23:41.280

Greek perspective. And I'm talking to him. I was hanging out with Doctor Rob Rod Carruthers and New Testament, all these New Testament guys. And so I'm like a little leery of ta talking about uh

00:23:41.290 - 00:23:55.460

New Testament stuff, but I don't care. I'm just gonna say what I'm gonna say. So uh so the the the idea of heaven and earth. So the Greek idea of heaven and or the the

00:23:55.470 - 00:24:04.820

world of, of spirit and flesh is that those things cannot touch, right? Like the, the , the the world of flesh cannot touch the spirit world. Otherwise it's, it's, it's tainted,

00:24:04.830 - 00:24:15.780

it's, it's, it's garbage now. So the spirit world has to be way up there, right ? And the the flesh world is earth and matter and skin and all of that kind of stuff and

00:24:15.790 - 00:24:25.440

, and heaven is uh and I was kind of wonder like where is heaven? Like is it in the uh like above the clouds? Uh It can be in space because that would be weird. I

00:24:25.450 - 00:24:40.750

mean, that would be weird even for Austin, I think so, gonna die and go to space . I don't know. Um But uh so then this, then the flesh world becomes something that uh

00:24:40.770 - 00:24:52.890

is uh is interesting to me because it's this, it becomes this dichotomy of spirit and flesh. And so Christians have a real tough time with bodies. And I, I, I talked, I have

00:24:52.900 - 00:25:04.640

my somatic um trauma counselor who said to me, um uh like trauma lives in your body. And he said, where do you feel trauma? And I was like, what I was raised a Christian

00:25:04.650 - 00:25:15.380

, I don't have a body. He was like , what I said, it's all spirit like you just the spirit's gonna go to heaven, the body doesn't matter. It's everything's gonna burn, right?

00:25:15.390 - 00:25:25.330

That's what we're, I was taught and, and like, it's, and so you don't feel anything and it took it still taken me a while to like, OK, what is my neck hurt?

00:25:25.340 - 00:25:38.180

OK. Is that trauma? Like, I don't even know because that's how much I was raised in this whole spirit and flesh dichotomy. Uh So, um but ancient Hebrew thought that the spirit world and

00:25:38.190 - 00:25:51.330

of uh of the uh of, of, of the earth is much more. And I did one of my professors did this. Oh And I just got chills when I saw that I do this.

00:25:51.340 - 00:26:02.370

And I was like, that's like indigenous thought like that the spirit world is right here. There's this thin veil and, and of course, Celtic um uh spirituality talks about uh thin places. And uh

00:26:02.380 - 00:26:11.220

they talk about the hearth as being uh you know , the other side is the spirit world. And uh we have the idea that the ancestors are always with us. And that is, and again,

00:26:11.230 - 00:26:22.690

that's, as I said yesterday, Terry Doctor Terry Leblanc can make my elder said, we'll call them the great cloud of witnesses. And um and so indigenous thought is that they are always with us and

00:26:22.700 - 00:26:32.650

that's where we get our strength from is that they are, they're, they're with us holding us up and that gives me a whole lot of strength. And I thought that was really beautiful and it's very

00:26:32.660 - 00:26:41.030

, very different from that heaven. That's way, way up there. And also I in, in the Book of Revelation, you know, there's um there's the new heaven and the new Earth. And

00:26:41.040 - 00:26:51.200

so I was like, oh, when I die , can I go to like I do I get a choice? Can I go to New Earth? I don't know, like anyway, just a thought

00:26:51.210 - 00:27:15.600

, just throwing that out there. Um uh So um another thought in scripture is uh Jesus and his disciples in the upper room. So they're facing persecution , they are um hiding for their lives. They

00:27:15.610 - 00:27:27.810

are all of these things, they're, you know , they're impending doom. And I have always heard this interpreted as uh in preaching in different places as the church is being persecuted by the enemy and the

00:27:27.820 - 00:27:37.550

enemy. Could be, you know, government or evil people or the devil or whatever it is. But it's always the church and it's always the, you know, American Canadian church. And, and

00:27:37.700 - 00:27:51.170

, and so they find themselves sitting with Jesus, sitting with the apostles, sitting with all of the folks up there and, and waiting for this, I I impending doom. Whereas again, Doctor Richard

00:27:51.180 - 00:28:11.040

Twist, my um one of my favorite mentors, my Lakota mentor, he always said that uh Jesus was a brown skinned tribal person oppressed by a tyrannical government that wanted to eradicate their people. So to

00:28:11.050 - 00:28:26.780

an indigenous person, we would see the Roman Empire as the Western church and the governments of Canada and the United States. And we would be the ones sitting with Jesus and the disciples and being oppressed and

00:28:26.790 - 00:28:41.340

waiting for impending doom. And nobody ever told me that perspective. I think it wasn't until um liberation theology started kind of um and, and folks were just like, oh no, and kind of ran

00:28:41.350 - 00:28:56.610

away from liberation theology. Some of my evangelical evangelical friends, you could like hold up a liberation theology book and then they say boo and they'd run away . I know and I would, I was just

00:28:56.620 - 00:29:07.950

like hugging those books like my goodness, this is true. This is, this is telling a different story. Uh So another story that um that I love to share is about um uh John, the

00:29:07.960 - 00:29:19.230

Baptist and Jesus their relationship. Um you know, Mary and Elizabeth and uh they're sisters. So Jesus and John were first cousins. We never, nobody ever told me that when we were in church like

00:29:19.240 - 00:29:33.550

they never uh it's because of the perspective, right ? Of preachers, a very western western perspective. And so the first cousins in indigenous cultures and in many um cultures, people of color is that uh

00:29:33.560 - 00:29:45.900

first cousin, we don't say first cousin, we say brother or sister, right? That my first cousins are my brothers and sisters and uh and, and their kids are not my second cousins. They're

00:29:45.910 - 00:29:56.770

my nieces and nephews. I'm auntie to them. And uh and, and I love that, I love that indigenous culture is just this family. And we um we talk about uh well, the Navajo

00:29:56.780 - 00:30:07.390

word for um auntie, I learned uh from some of my dear Navajo friends is, it means little mother. And so your auntie is your little mother . And, and I love that so much because

00:30:07.400 - 00:30:18.430

my mom is, is past now and, but I have her younger sister and her older sister who raised her and they're my, they're my little mothers . Um So Jesus and John the Baptist. Um

00:30:19.100 - 00:30:29.040

So when John the Baptist dies, of course, then we, you know, Jesus goes and has to and mo wants to mourn. Um but we never talk about uh I've never, I was never

00:30:29.050 - 00:30:40.880

told that again. It was always the church being persecuted. It was always um you know our everybody and, and, but I was never told that um John, the Baptist was again the brown skin

00:30:41.240 - 00:30:52.940

uh man who was executed by a, a tyrannical government that wanted to eradicate his people. Tho those things were never taught to me because, and, and this is there's another uh thing that I learned

00:30:52.950 - 00:31:02.250

as well. Um Most of you probably know about it was the the slave Bible. I was so shocked to hear about the slave Bible because it actually says in the Bible, like, don't take anything

00:31:02.260 - 00:31:11.230

away and don't add anything to it. Like there's like literal instructions in there. But what they did was the slave Bible I learned was that they took out all of the scriptures that had to do with

00:31:11.240 - 00:31:26.400

freedom. Oh my goodness. I just uh thank you for saying constructive and strategic anger at Doctor Towns because I want to bust this pulpit when I read it. I hear about these things. I just

00:31:26.410 - 00:31:37.410

get so frustrated. I'm like, how on earth do we do we deal with this stuff? How on earth do we overcome some of these things that happen? The injustices that happened to our indigenous people

00:31:37.840 - 00:31:47.710

? I don't even call myself a Christian anymore because of this. I don't, I, I, I say I'm a person of faith, but I , I can't call myself a Christian because there's people

00:31:47.720 - 00:32:00.320

, the young people in my community who, who hate the church and I don't want to identify as someone who is like the residential school in their mind . That's the same thing. The churches today are

00:32:00.330 - 00:32:09.950

like the residential school then they want, they and I've even had um indigenous folks from Powells uh in a lineup for fry bread uh for, for Indian Taco. And they, we got to talk and

00:32:09.960 - 00:32:20.690

talk about church and stuff and, and one young man dressed in beautiful regalia. He said, uh my parents, we were raised traditional indigenous way and my parents told me, don't ever go, don't

00:32:20.700 - 00:32:30.690

ever go to a church because when you go in there, they're gonna take away your language, your songs, your dance and your culture, everything. And uh and that's how uh indigenous young, a

00:32:30.700 - 00:32:49.010

lot of indigenous young people think when um and a and a lot of um us are get um very uh militant about this very because it's uh and, and so um the first time I met uh Richard

00:32:49.020 - 00:33:00.900

Twist was in Eul BC. It's a first nations community by Tofino. It's on the west coast of Canada and uh west coast of Vancouver Island, one of the most westerly points of Canada. And I

00:33:00.910 - 00:33:10.050

was singing and I was doing, this was in um 1996. I was just singing, you know , the shine, Jesus Shine kind of stuff. I was doing all the worship and uh that we

00:33:10.060 - 00:33:21.830

normally did and I'd, I'd never ever seen indigenous people who are Christians uh, have like indigenous stuff in the church. There was always this dichotomy, you know, there was this two railroad tracks.

00:33:21.840 - 00:33:31.040

I love being native. I loved all the sounds and songs, the regalia, all of that stuff , but it didn't belong in the church in my mind. So I had this double life of undercover

00:33:31.050 - 00:33:39.900

Indian in the church. You know, I kind of take off my, uh, in, in , in, uh, indigeneity like an unwanted winter or rain jacket kind of hanging at the door and

00:33:39.910 - 00:33:53.650

just try to ride under the radar of. And so nobody would ask too many questions. So I wouldn't have those micro or macro aggressions. Uh And , and Richard said after we did our worship,

00:33:53.660 - 00:34:02.110

I had a whole native team, I had really cool native team of and they could just do those Johnny B good songs, man. We were, we were cool, I thought anyway, and they

00:34:02.120 - 00:34:13.300

made me look good. But uh Richard got up after as a big 6 ft two in Lakota and he goes, that was really great worship you guys . But, and I was like, who the

00:34:13.310 - 00:34:21.340

heck says? But after that, and, and I didn't know him at all and he says, but I wish our native people would write their own , their own songs. So he went on with

00:34:21.350 - 00:34:29.750

his message and I was sitting there fuming the whole time like we write our own songs, blah, blah. So we went back that afternoon, we had the afternoon off and I, we pulled up

00:34:29.830 - 00:34:39.020

, we stole some songs from uh uh God from the Bible and uh some words and we put some uh music to them, got back and we were like, I was like, hey, we wrote

00:34:39.030 - 00:34:51.540

a song because I was in my twenties, I was, you know, I was like me, but in my twenties for anyone who got to meet me in my twenties. So I said, we

00:34:51.550 - 00:35:00.260

wrote a song and we sang the song and, and then we finished our worship and we sat down and, and Richard gets up and he goes, you guys wrote a song? That's amazing. He

00:35:00.270 - 00:35:09.100

goes, wow, he goes, uh that was , I'm so proud of you. But I was like, what do I have to do? And uh he says, I wish our native people would

00:35:09.110 - 00:35:23.510

write songs with our language, with our instruments in our style. And so I went home and uh and, and those words, the prophetic words and prophetic, I mean, like ex Nilo prophetic words

00:35:23.520 - 00:35:35.110

call something out of nothing. And Richard changed the course of my life. The, the, the , the spirit of God through Richard changed the course of my life. And I went home and the

00:35:35.120 - 00:35:59.490

first chant that came to me was, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, aye, aye. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, yeah. Yeah. Hey,

00:36:00.280 - 00:36:20.140

hey, hey, hey, hey. And, and many more after that, thank you. Thank you. And so began my decolonization those days. Uh going to Region College at the same time as

00:36:20.150 - 00:36:30.440

, as meeting Richard and a plethora of other indigenous Christian leaders who were very, very, very native , who went to POWs, who went to pot latches, who, who told me stories of the

00:36:30.450 - 00:36:39.780

creator, who they saved my faith. Because every and I went to so many different first Asian communities , I would find an elder and I would say , please tell me the name of creator. Uh

00:36:39.790 - 00:36:52.490

and, and a creation story. And they all had a name of creator and the creation story. They all had beautiful ceremonies for approaching the creator for starting your day, beautiful beautiful ceremonies that as I

00:36:52.500 - 00:37:05.370

said, um I, I really believe that indigenous people uh when we walk in our values are more Christian than most Christians who are in churches. Uh And so, um so, yeah, so the

00:37:05.380 - 00:37:15.720

work of decolonization is impossibly tough, but I think it's uh it's worth it. And uh somebody asked me, what do I pray for you? Or , and I was like, not just for me

00:37:15.730 - 00:37:29.080

, but for all our people pray, pray for us because uh complex uh trauma and compound grief is uh is, is very real and it's really, it's really tough. Uh And I'm, I'm so

00:37:29.090 - 00:37:37.790

grateful to have heard um the voices of hope, so many voices. And I, I, again , I have hope when I hear young people, teachers who are people who are in teacher teaching programs

00:37:37.800 - 00:37:45.510

. And they say, well, I learned about the residential school and I'm, how could this happen ? And then it gives me hope and I, I have hope for the future and for our young

00:37:45.520 - 00:37:49.290

people. So thank you again for listening to my