Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1090: A Native American's Perspecitve on the 4th of July: Terry Wildman

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

Terry M. Wildman (Ojibwe and Yaqui) is the lead translator, general editor, and project manager of the First Nations Version of the Bible. He serves as the director of spiritual growth and leadership development for Native InterVarsity. He is also the founder of Rain Ministries and has previously served as a pastor and worship leader. In this conversation, I wanted to get Terry's perspecive on how Native Americans feel about the 4th of July. Not trying to spoil your fire works celebration. Just trying to help us have a more thorough--indeed, Christian--perspecive on the liturgies of the empire. https://www.ivpress.com/terry-m-wildman 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is the one and only Terry W. Wildman. Terry is the lead translator, general editor, and project manager of the First Nations Version of the Bible. He serves as the director of spiritual growth and leadership development for Native InterVarsity. He's also the founder of RAIN Ministries and has previously served as a pastor, worship leader, and he and his wife, Darlene, live in Arizona. I invited Terry to come on the show because as I often like to do, I love to get less popular perspectives on various events that happen throughout our calendar year. And so the 4th of July is tomorrow. and many of us won't even think twice about eating homemade ice cream, watching fireworks, and celebrating the good old red, white, and blue. It's a time of a lot of patriotic fervor, and I think most Christians won't even think twice about just celebrating the great things about the founding of America and the independence that many of us have had. But how do Native Americans think of the 4th of July? That's the question we're going to wrestle with on this podcast. Terry Wildman is Native American, otherwise known as part of the First Nations or indigenous people who were here before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And I'm always interested in getting just different perspectives that are outside the mainstream view on various issues,

including how Native Americans feel about the Fourth of July. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Terry Weldon. Terry, thanks so much for being on Theology in the Raw on the eve of July 4th. I want to get into your thoughts on the 4th of July and America as a whole. But first, why don't you just tell us a bit about yourself? Who are you and what do you do? Well, first of all, just say thanks for having me on your program here and say bonjour, hello to all your listeners out there. And I'm glad you're giving a place for native voices to speak. It's a voice that's been not out there as much as other voices. And so I appreciate that very much. So I'll give you an introduction in Ojibwe, the language of my ancestry, which I don't

speak the language, but this is a introduction I was given and taught by a Nishinabe friend who does speak Ojibwe from Minnesota. So, does speak Ojibwe from Minnesota. So what I said was, hello, my friends who share this life together with me. My Indian name given to me by my mentors is Gitche Nimiki Manomash Kiki Manidu, which translates as voice of great thunder with a good medicine spirit. And I'm also known as Terry Wildman. So that one's easier to live up to. But I speak that name that's been given to me and I carry that name to honor my people. name that's been given to me, and I carry that name to honor my people. I said, it feels good to be here today with you in this space, this kind of digital space that we're in today,

kind of digital smoke signals or something. So I'm glad we can communicate with each other. So I was born and raised in Michigan. My ancestry includes Ojibwe from Ontario, Canada, Yaqui from Sonora, Mexico, as well as English, German, and Spaniard. So I'm married to Darlene Wildman. I have five children, eight grandchildren, three great-grandchildren. My wife and I currently live in Maricopa, Arizona, on the traditional lands of the Pima and the Tohono O'odham. So it does feel good to be with everyone here today.

That's a little bit about me. I also founded years ago, about 20 years ago, I founded RAIN Ministries. That's our nonprofit. And I've worked over the years with many different organizations in partnership. Currently, I work with Native InterVarsity. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship works with students, college students on college campuses. And so now they have a Native branch to InterVarsity. And I serve as the Director of Spiritual Growth Leadership Development in Native InterVarsity, and I serve as the Director of Spiritual Growth Leadership Development

in Native InterVarsity, along with, of course, the First Nation Version translation, which some of the staff from Native InterVarsity actually had input into that translation, including college, Native college students. So the translation itself is very grassroots in one sense, trying to put into English the way our Native people might speak in their traditional languages, kind of carrying over the feel of that and the culture of that somewhat into an English translation. The reason, real quick, is I'd say 95% of our Native people speak our languages. The rest do not speak our language, and even less can read our languages. So all those Bibles that were translated into different Native languages, they're not being read. So we felt there needed to be an English translation to stand in the gap until we can restore our

languages and things like that. And you oversaw that project, right? Yes, I oversaw that. I was the lead translator and project manager for the New Testament, which was published almost two years ago by InterVarsity Press, and we're currently working on the Psalms and Proverbs. Okay. Can you give us an example of some differences between the First Nations translation and

any standard English translation? Because it's in English, people say, what would be particularly native about this kind of translation? One of the things is, why do we have 50, 60, maybe 100 English translations? First of all, because people hear things differently. And depending on when you were born, if you go back to read the Geneva Bible or the King James Bible, as a matter of fact, if you go back to the original King James Bible, you probably could only understand about half of it. Because the English language changes, it adapts, and it's adapted in different regions, geographic regions, cultural regions. In the

United States, you have different translations geared toward different people. I remember a translation that affected me greatly was the Living Bible by Kenneth Tanner years and years ago during the Jesus movement. And that translation, even though it hasn't been considered a scholarly one, it touched so many people everywhere. It really did. You know, it had its season. There's a new one out now that I don't, that is supposed to be theologically better, but I don't think it's as good. There's something, there was something just raw and good about that early translation that he did. And so everyone hears English differently. So when you go across cultures, and that's one of the things that's happening with this translation,

is we're not just crossing languages. We're crossing cultures. And so when you cross a culture, people talk about and hear things differently. For example, if you were raised as a Native person in a traditional home, your grandparents probably spoke to you in an English very familiar with the First Nation versions. As a matter of fact, some of our Native friends and Native people who have given me feedback on this have said, Oh, you sounded like my grandma when she used to tell us those stories. You sounded like grandpa when he sat in the breakfast table and told us our ancient stories. It sounds just like that. And so there's something about capturing some of the

culture in idiomatic expressions in English. For example, one of the things that we wanted to do was kind of decolonize the English. A lot of people don't understand that when Native people hear English, in our elders, some of them, it's their second language, English is. And by young people, they grew up kind of hearing that second language english but also learning as they go to school and college learning to speak a little differently but they still resonate to that to those early stories the early way the elders would speak but we also wanted to stay away from certain words for example in our boarding schools where they removed our native children and put them into boarding schools they forbade us to speak in our language.

It was against, you know, we were punished for speaking our language. But there was also other things we couldn't do. We couldn't any longer. The men couldn't have long hair. It was a sin. You couldn't speak in your language. It was a sin to speak in your language. And pretty soon you get this identity thing that happens where you feel like it's a sin to be an Indian. It's

a sin to be Native American. So these kids are growing up with this, you know, in these boarding schools with this message being put into them. So when you grow up and then you hear the word sin, what does that trigger? It triggers something. You read the Bible in English, you come to the word sin, and it triggers that negative idea within you. So we chose other words. We chose broken ways. If you walk in broken ways, some people have bad hearts, okay, that need to be healed, bad hearts that need to be fixed, you know. And so that is a lot. Matter of fact, that's probably a closer to the Greek meaning, which basically means to miss the mark.

Yeah. You know, or sometimes we said that we're not living in the way Creator made us to live. That would be sin. But that's how we translated it. We also did something that has been unique in Bible translation, is that we took all the meanings of the names. Like everybody's name in the Bible has a meaning behind the language. And we catch a little bit of that when Jesus is given his name. An angel comes to Mary, right? And she says, and he says, you're going to call him

Jesus because he will set his people free from their bad hearts and broken ways. hearts and broken ways or as so we gave so jesus name has a meaning and in hebrew it's yeshua and that that name yeshua translates from the hebrew name for god the short version of yah yeshua yahweh yeshua and the shua part means to be delivered, to be rescued, to be set free. Okay, so we call Jesus creator sets free. We give him the meaning of his name, which the original language people would have caught that in his name. So every time Jesus occurs, you put the creator sets free? We just put creator sets free no no the okay it sets free and but in small parentheses we do put the standard english usage of jesus okay okay okay

we do that for all the names paul uh his name means small so we call him small man okay abraham what does his name mean father Father of many nations. That was a pretty easy one. But Paul actually uses Abraham's name theologically in Romans. He says he's the father of all nations, many nations. And, you know, he's the father of the Gentiles and the Jewish people, nations and you know he's the father of the Gentiles and the Jewish people you know and so Paul uses that the meaning of the name theologically and many times in the scripture the meaning of the name sometimes adds to the story adds depth to the story you know one thing you don't catch in John chapter 3 when he meets Jesus meets Nicodemus okay so's, I call this a clash of worldviews.

Jesus has a worldview about what the kingdom of God is, but so does Nicodemus. But Nicodemus isn't, he's seeing it from an earthly perspective. Jesus is bringing a heavenly perspective to Nicodemus. But guess what Nicodemus' name means? Conquers the people. So conquers the people meets creator sets free. Two worldviews. That gives a whole different layer to the story. It really does. And that's true with a lot of times in Scripture. Of course, Jesus' name has meaning. I think even Paul played off his name when he said, I'm the least, the smallest of the apostles. Because his name in the Greek language meant small, but his name in Hebrew didn't mean that.

It meant man who is questioned is the Hebrew meaning of his name. Man who is questioned is the Hebrew meaning of his name. So when we translated all the meanings of the name, we had to do research. There's books that have researched this. There's scholars that have researched this. We found for all the names in all the places, for example, what does Jerusalem mean? Most people that are biblical or anything. City of peace? Right, village of yeah or city of peace uh because the the but for native people we had the same thing in

our culture our names all had traditionally had meaning so what happens when we put the meanings of the biblical names in there a lot of the native people just whoa you know they they they relate to it in a way that that they wouldn't relate to just the common english translation so those are some of the the reasons we call it uh we've been told that it's a dynamic equivalence okay translation which means uh it's not word for word but it's meaning for meaning. But a meaning understood in a certain culture. Is it, so I mean, for the majority of my listeners right now who are not Native, would they benefit from this translation? Or is it really directed, obviously, primarily to Native people, but have other people read it and really benefited from it?

Well, yeah. It's amazing the feedback that we've been getting on it, is non-Native people are getting as much out of it as Native people. I've had, I've actually been interviewed by college professors, biblical college professors. And they said to me, when I began to read your First Nation version, all of a sudden, the scripture had become so dry and academic to me. Suddenly, it came to life again. Suddenly, it spoke to me in a different way. It didn't speak to me intellectually. It spoke to me emotionally. And the imagery that comes out in it, they said, just made them look deeper, even theologically, at certain passages and things like that. And people, if you go on Amazon.com and check out the reviews, you'll see the same thing being said.

Native and non-Native people really have responded to it. So we consider this First Nation version a gift from Native people to our Native people. But we also consider a gift from our Native people to the dominant culture. That's awesome. That's great. You know, it's a gift of healing, of reconciliation, you might say. That's our hope, to raise interest, to let the body of Christ in America know that Native people are still here. And Native people have a way of understanding the world and the Creator that has depth to it and meaning to it that they're missing out on. Well, that's a great segue to, I guess, the main topic we're going to talk about tomorrow is the Fourth of July.

to, I guess, the main topic we're going to talk about tomorrow is the 4th of July. And I often, you know, growing up as a member of the dominant culture, you know, there's just so many things, the questions I never asked, things I didn't see, you know, you're the fish in the water that doesn't know what water is, you know, and it's more recently as I get to know people of different minority experiences, I'm like, oh, wow. Yeah. This people see the world differently depending on whether you're a part of a minority or majority culture. But yeah, I mean, you're in a unique, even a more unique situation, I guess, in that your background where you were here first, you know, like, and the whole American narrative that I grew up in Columbus, sailing the ocean blue and discovering, discovering America.

Wow. This place, you know, and then, you know, discover it. It's kind of, I mean, do you discover a land that's already been occupied? But, um, and then, you know, just having a very European view of the history of America that I grew up with, man, that really shapes you. history of America that I grew up with, man, that really shapes you. And it's just more recently when I'm like, that's not the only story told of America when it comes to patriotic holidays, like the 4th of July. I don't mind stirring the pot, but that's not my intent. My intention is I just want to broaden my mindset of, yeah, how do other people view these kind of symbolic celebrations like the 4th of July? So I guess let me just frame that in a question. Terry, what does tomorrow, the Fourth of July, mean to you? How do you view

this holiday? There's so much to unpack there, but I'll do my best to share a few thoughts from what I've learned. What I've learned from my elders, what I've learned from other Native believers in Jesus, and also from Natives who don't believe in Jesus, you know, but yet they're still very spiritual people that believe in a great creator who watches over all of us. But, you know, one of the things to understand is that you said that Native people were here first. And I think there's something important about that, because even though we're the first people of the land, we're not the only ones with a story, but our story is the deepest story. And the injustices that exist in this nation called America, right?

The injustices that exist, the deepest root go to our Native people. And a lot of people, and because it's probably, it's an embarrassment to this nation. If you really know what, can tell the story of what happened, it's truly an embarrassment to America, but not only America, but American Christians and Christianity in America and the way that the Christian people and the Christian organizations cooperated with the government to take away our way of life, to take away our languages, to strip us of our identities, to take our children and deprogram them in boarding schools and things like that, to put us on reservations where it was illegal. We could actually face criminal charges for doing our

ceremonies. A lot of people don't know that, and that does speak into the Fourth of July. What do we do with the Fourth of July? When you know the real story and you realize that the 4th of July is a celebration of independence from England. Well, we didn't, we weren't subject to England, you know, it wasn't independence for us. As a matter of fact, perspective is everything, you know, and really how we read the Bible, we read the Bible from a certain perspective. And the perspective we read the Bible colors the way we understand the scriptures. When we, who do we see ourselves in when we read the scriptures? Who does America see herself as? Oh, America's Israel coming into the promised land of America. Oh, we got to drive out those heathen.

The Canaanites, you know, the seven nations and stuff. And so America saw itself and kind of presented itself as the new Israel. You know, and this was the promised land. And somehow it was our destiny to take this land. it was our destiny to take this land. But it was Christianity in the Catholic bowls and the papal bowls of the Doctrine of Discovery that became the legal precedent that our nation has used to say, it was legal for us to take that land away from the native people. And here's why.

Because of the doctrine of discovery. Can you explain the doctrine of discovery for those who don't know? The doctrine of discovery came out of the 1600s. So many Christian nations were fighting against each other. There's Spain and England and all these different nations that called themselves Christian nations. Personally, I don't believe in Christian nations. I believe in Christian people. Right.

Okay. But not Christian nations. So these nations were fighting. And then as they were expanding out, each nation wanted to expand its influence and its territory. It was looking for new territories to make part of their nations. And so they would fight each other. The Spaniards, Spain would fight other nations that were trying to take territory and claim it as theirs.

territory and claim it as theirs. So this happened, and the Pope finally came up with this, in the 1600s, came up with this doctrine or teaching or proclamation that said that any nation that's a Christian nation that finds land where people live and there's no one who is Christian upon that land, then you can claim it for your nation and for the glory of God, as long as there's not another nation that's already done that. Another Christian, Christian in air quotes. Right. A Christian nation has already done that. So that happened in Ireland. When the Scottish people came across, came to Ireland, and matter of fact, I think it was two brothers were racing to see which one would actually get there first. And the story is, one got there, was going to land in front of the other one to put the flag down to claim it, right? Under the doctrine of discovery. And the other brothers, he saw the other one was going to get there. So he cuts off his hand and throws it on shore

to show that he, this is not, this is a true story. This is not made up. I've talked to people in Ireland and you can still see that bloody hand on flags. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. It's still on flags. But so, so when Christopher Columbus came here, he didn't actually come to our continent. He came, you know, south of us here.

And he came to the taino people and he basically claimed that right as his right under the doctrine of discovery and that's why we say columbus discovered america yeah okay so so there's a there's a legal precedent to using the word discovered. Okay, how can you discover a land that already has people in it only by a Christian doctrine that even Protestants were using as their way of expansion for their nations and their peoples. So coming back to the 4th of July, one thing to remember, this is an American holiday, the 4th of July, celebrating independence from Britain, right? So we should remember that the independence we enjoy as a nation was not only at the cost of

patriot soldiers, but also at great loss of life, independence, and culture for Native Americans. Their independence has had to be won back slowly over many generations. And it is still our own independence is still being in process today. We're still fighting. Our warriors are lawyers. And we're still fighting for the treaty rights that were promised our people. if we would give up this land, portions of these lands, we would get these rights. Well, we had over 350 treaties and not one of them was fulfilled. You know, some of them partially, we've had to win back those rights in court. So yeah, Independence Day, it's funny, it's celebrated by Native Americans. It is.

But not by all Native Americans. And it's celebrated a little differently in some places. And in my research, in my talking to some of the elders, I found out that back when the U.S. government in 1883, U.S. government outlawed our ceremonies, outlawed our gatherings. We couldn't gather together culturally. There was a document, a law put out called the Code of Indian Offenses, you know, back in 1883. You can still find that on Wikisource, that document. And what basically happened was we were no longer allowed to communally come together and have any kind of religious freedom at all. In a land that promotes itself as a land of religious freedom, we were denied religious freedom. From what I've heard and read,

the U.S. government decided on the 4th of July to let us gather together, to teach us to be patriotic. And so they said, you can gather together and you can wear your native regalia. And you can wear your native regalia. You can play your drums. You can't do any big secret ceremonies. But you can play your drums and dance and wear your outfits, right? But first you've got to parade through the local town in your outfits. So they can all watch you.

And your meetings have to be open to the public. They can't be secret. And you have to carry the American flag into your gathering. Okay? So the 4th of July became the day we could finally legally get together. So, yeah. We celebrated the 4th of July, but behind the scene, we're not really celebrating American independence. We're celebrating the fact that we can gather together. Yeah, we got to carry in this flag. But you know, today,

if you go to a powwow, you'll see the grand entry. You'll see them carry the American flag into the powwow. But guess what's in front of the American flag? The Native American flag. It's an Eagle Staff. It's carried in first, which is really interesting because every state has to first put the American flag up and then the state flag under it. But for our Native people, we're putting our flag ahead of the United States flag. you know we're putting our flag ahead of the united states flag you know but you know one of the things that the powwows also gave us an opportunity was many of our native people fought in world war ii oh really yeah we fought in world war ii some of us that's the only way we got citizenship was to fight in the war to agree to fight in the war, to agree to fight in the war. And we fought because we felt like we were protecting not the United States, but our land.

Native people still see this as our land. So we didn't want to be taken over by another foreign power. We're dealing with this one, and we're learning how to deal with this one. Why would we want another foreign power to come and take us over? So we fought. And that was how some of us first got citizenship was by serving in the armed forces. And so Native Americans at powwows on the 4th of July, not just the 4th of July, every powwow, they honor the veterans, all veterans. that the veterans, the native, all veterans, you know, whether it's Native American or not, we call all the veterans out into the circle and everyone comes and shakes their hands and says, thank you. And I've seen this, I've experienced it. I'm a veteran, two years there. And so that became a way of us honoring our veterans, honoring their sacrifice, honoring all the things that they did.

And so, yeah, there's a kind of patriotism that comes along with Native Americans, but it's a mixed bag of patriotism. It's patriotism over the physical land. Would that be correct well that's one way to see it um some native people uh are glad that at least the united states gives us some freedoms you know now we're not any longer we won back the right to not have to live on our reservations if we didn't want to you know or to be removed we can no longer or be removed out of our lands and things like that. What they used to do, we were moved around from place to place to place and along the way. So some Natives experience sort of what I call a love-hate relationship with America as a nation. They love the land. It's the home of our ancestors. And many feel

a deep, unexplainable connection to the geographic and historic homeland of their tribe. But here's a surprise. Among ethnic groups that serve in the armed forces, if you look at it by percentage of population, more Native Americans by population serve in the armed forces percentage than any other ethnic group. Really? I know. Yeah, it is very surprising. At every powwow, there is an honoring of the flag and the veterans, but it's tied right to the veterans and to the service and stuff. But many Native people are deeply disappointed, carry an undercurrent of anger, resentment toward the government because of what happened. The boarding schools, the stealing of our land, the breaking of the treaties, all these different things. They took the best of our land. They forced us to relocate to unknown lands. They imposed their

language and governmental structures on us. Every federally recognized tribe has to be set up legally a certain way for it to be accepted by the United States as a native nation. And we're considered, even though there's a word that we're actually considered sovereign nations, but we're sovereign dependent nations is actually how it works out. And so that's why you'll find within the states, the Native Americans have a separate identity within a state to the federal government than the state has. Okay. But we don't have any representation.

Think about that. Does the Bible support same-sex marriage? That's a question that many people are wrestling with today. And there's, you know, people who hold passionately to different answers to this question. Now, most dialogues about same-sex marriage, they end with divisiveness and confusion instead of clarity and a better understanding of the other person's position and even a better understanding of your own position. This is why I wrote a book titled, Does the Bible Support Same-Sex Marriage? 21 Conversations from a Historically Christian Perspective, which comes out in August this summer. So what I do in this book is I first talk about how Christians

should even go about having a profitable conversation about contentious issues. I really want us to cultivate a better posture in how we even go about defending our points of view or trying to refute others. I then lay out a biblical theological case for the historically Christian view of marriage. And then for the rest of the book, I take what I see as the top 21 arguments for same-sex marriage. And I respond to each one in a way that's both thoughtful and thorough. Some of these arguments are, you know, since some people are born gay, then God must allow for same-sex marriage. Or, you know, the word homosexual was only recently added to the Bible.

Or the traditional view of marriage is harmful to gay and lesbian people. And many other arguments that I wrestle with in this book, does the Bible support same-sex marriage? So if you're looking for a theologically precise and nuanced approach to these arguments, one that doesn't strawman the other view to make it look bad, then I would encourage you to please check out my book, Does the Bible Support Same-Sex Marriage? You can order it now on Amazon or wherever books are sold. For me, one of the more disturbing features of American history is what you alluded to earlier about the kind of Christian narrative that was mapped on the discovery of America. Namely, you know,

Christians are the new Israel, which make, you know, coming to the promised land, which makes by default, given the narrative, Native Americans, the Canaanites. And therefore, this new Israel has a divine mandate to annihilate the Canaanites, namely Native people. And I've read some disturbing quotes. This seems to be a fairly, several hundred years ago, fairly mainstream view among Christians and just people coming to America as a whole. Is that an accurate, was that a widespread belief, number one? And number two, do we still see kind of a residue of that belief among Christians today? Is that still kind of prevalent to any extent, as much as you know? prevalent to any extent as much as you know well yeah um it is accurate um christian christian organizations many of them most of them i would say backed the government

and sometimes they didn't agree with the government about the way the government was treating native people okay so they actually said let us do it well because we'll treat them you know we'll make sure it's done good so that's how the churches and churches organizations were actually paid by the government to civilize our native people or to christianize them and so a lot of natives their only, if they were going to live without persecution, without restrictions on them, they became Christian. Now, and it's really odd because I've talked to so many native elders who were traditional and their family became Christian, but they'll say, well, we did it so that we could survive, you know? And so, but some natives also, there were early missionaries, but you're talking, there's such a huge history here.

You know, I mean, we're talking hundreds of years, you know, William Penn before the founding of the United States, William Penn did a great job. He treated with the natives and they lived in peace together with the settlers, with the Europeans in Pennsylvania, what's called Pennsylvania today. They lived in peace for 70 years. Oh, wow. And their villages, some villages were exclusively native. Some villages were exclusively settler. But there were combined villages where they lived together.

And that lasted 70 years until his sons and a new king came along and changed everything and began to drive the natives out and claim the land as theirs. And so there's just this, the Moravian missionaries came. So there's just this, the Moravian missionaries came, they did a fairly good job of, you know, bringing natives to faith in Jesus. I personally believe that Christianity and native people, I shouldn't say Christianity, Christianity is kind of a non-biblical term, you know. But, you know, the way, the message of Jesus is very, very compatible with much of our Native cultures. Interesting. Very compatible. Matter of fact, I think that the Native people, my own tribe, the Anishinaabe, the Ojibwe people, were closer to the teachings of Jesus, living those teachings out, than the missionaries that were coming to bring us that message. Because the missionaries cooperated with the government in taking our languages, taking our children. And, you know, they said, well, those people had good hearts.

They weren't bad people. Well, yeah, but if it wasn't for the people with the good hearts, that system would have fallen apart. It wouldn't have been sustained. It was the good heart of people who sustained the system that eventually hurt us and harmed us in so many ways and hurt the message of Jesus. so many ways and hurt the message of Jesus. When you take something as beautiful as the message of Jesus, of the love of our Creator for people, that He would be willing to die to show us how much Creator loves us and to offer His life to bring new life to us. When you take that message and you force it on a people and you give them the choice of, well, you can live in your old ways over here, but guess what? You're not going to be able to get a job. You're not going to be able to thrive in this society.

The only way you're going to be able to thrive is you're going to have to come over and become Christians like us and become Americans because Americans and Christians are the same thing, right? That was kind of the feeling because of that teaching of manifest destiny, the teaching of the idea of the new Israel. And even though it was shared pulpit after pulpit after pulpit. It became part of our news articles. The guy, Frank Baum, who wrote – what's the movie with Dorothy? I can look it up. Oh, Wizard of Oz? Wizard of Oz.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He wrote the Wizard of Oz. He just wrote some of the most horrendous things in his newspaper editorial about Native people. Horrendous things about Native people and how they should just be simply, we would do them a service to wipe them off the face of the earth. They are nothing but scourges upon our societies and all this kind of stuff you know i mean there was some incredibly bad attitudes that was publicly acceptable to be read it wasn't countered there there weren't voices that were countering these things that were being said. And then it was like, look at how much God has blessed America. It must be that we did the right thing because isn't the very fact that we're so blessed

and now the most powerful nation on earth, doesn't that mean that God was behind us doing what we did? Well, it depends how you look at blessing. Look at the Beatitudes. Who's blessed? Those who conquer and take over and have the best economic policies or the most power and the greatest weapons on earth? Are those the ones that Creator's blessing rests upon? Or is it the poor in spirit?

Is it the peacemakers? Is it the ones who mourn and who weep a trail of tears because of the way that the empires have behaved like beasts to devour our peoples, you know? I know those are strong words. And if some of your listeners out there are going, well, I don't know about this guy. He's an angry Indian. No, no, no, no. I think the majority of my audience will be very appreciative. I think they love seeing things from various perspectives that they're not used to. No, no, you be you.

And I mean, you're back. I'll be me. And you're quoting, I mean, the book of revelation, which says that very thing that these empires and the first century is Rome, but there was, you know, Babylon before that and Greece and Persia and empires that came after that. America is either an empire or empire like in many ways. an empire or empire like in many ways um the fact that we have military bases in almost over 80 countries is at least empire like you know we're not going out and conquering lands anymore necessarily but certainly have our hands and lots of dictatorships and stuff and we've messed with the middle east and latin america and have caused lots of problems for our own self-gain so we we behave in an empire-like way i shouldn't say we i i don't

like to use the plural pronoun to refer to the nation i was born into we is the global church not the name so but yeah we the the nation now called america has it has behaved in empire-like ways, which the book of Revelation does say is a dragon-empowered beast. I'm just circling back to your analogy with the beast. Yeah, and the prophets of Israel saw these empires as beasts. And part of the idea of a beast is that a beast devours so there's a devouring that takes place the america was founded on devouring land devouring african-american labor to establish itself in a blessing way, okay? Which we say, oh, that's such a blessing.

Well, you know, Rome was the most powerful empire on earth. Was that God's blessing? Babylon was the most powerful empire on earth. Was that God's blessing? Or is God calling these empires into account? You know, and so from a native perspective, and let me say it this way, looking at perspectives. When I see the sunset, how many, we love sunsets, right? Yeah, I do.

But the exact same moment that we are seeing the sunset, someone else is seeing a sunrise in another part of the world. It's the exact same moment that we are seeing the sunset, someone else is seeing a sunrise, another part of the world. It's the exact same moment. So for people, for the settlers from Europe, this was a sunrise time. For the native people, it was a sunset, a way of life coming to an end. It all depends on what your perspective is. How do you see this nation? How do you read the Bible? Many people, when we read the Bible, and we're part of the greatest superpower on earth, we don't ever equate America to Babylon. We don't equate America to Rome.

We equate America to Israel. Okay. So even as we read it, who do we identify with when we read the Bible? Peter, right? Not Judas. We identify with the heroes of the Bible and we hate those villains, but we can't see in any way how we might have behaved, you know, how we might be behaving as these villains behaved. Judas betrayed Jesus for what? Silver. That's what it says. I think he had other motives also, but the Bible doesn't really give into a whole bunch of motives for that. But do we as believers in Jesus, can we use that story of Judas to examine ourselves, our motives? Are we betraying Jesus for economic securities? Are we betraying Jesus for, for different things for, uh, we'll continue to, to, uh, to destroy the good things in this land, you know, because, you know, we're, you know, we have the right to do that because God said, take dominion. God said, take dominion.

Okay. But dominion doesn't mean swallowing up the resources and poisoning the rivers and, you know, all the things that native people, you're going to find out, this is our perspective. You know, this is how we look at it. And we're looking at the same thing at the same moment and coming up with two different ways of seeing it. And I just hope that Christians will become more open to seeing through other eyes. You know, and that's what I hope that will come out of the First Nation version. You referenced William Penn. I didn't know that about him. Are there other, well, I guess my broader question is, it seems like there, there was

different approaches from the settlers. Some that were maybe more positive, like, like a William Penn and others that were much more genocidal. Would that be accurate that we can't look at the, the time of European settling in what is now called America as monolithic? Like it was just a bunch of genocidal Europeans coming over to eradicate the Canaanites. Like there was, there's diverse perspectives. Is that accurate? Absolutely. Very, very diverse perspectives. The thing that you have, you have to really

look at history fully and you have to kind of do what, what is it, the 12-step program says to do. We have to take a moral inventory of the history of our nation. Yeah. Can we be honest? Can we be ruthfully honest with ourselves and looking at history, at what happened? But as I've looked into history, I can bring out all the negative stuff, but I also found positive stuff taking place. Things happen. Not so much with our government as with people, other people, individuals who didn't go along with the government, who stood

on the side of Native people, who sometimes even suffered because go along with the government, who stood on the side of Native people, who sometimes even suffered because they stood with the Native people on things. I can't give you a list of names. As a matter of fact, I wrote a book about, that was written for evangelicals, kind of a perspective on looking at America and how we were founded and comparing it to the teachings of the scripture and comparing it to looking at it through native eyes and bringing that all together. You know, if we can accept that we sin, I mean, you you know for evangelical that should be easy right right right admit i've sinned but the hard part is when you when you think oh no i can't call that sin because what what does that mean for me what does that mean for me today what does that mean for my

blessing what's my responsibility in all this? And I address some of those things in my book, but I would almost want to write another book, which I don't have time to do right now, where I really say, here's the ones that did it right. Here's the places where there were godly seeds sown among our Native people and people who stood with our Native people on the way. I'll say this, their voice was not loud enough or strong enough to overcome the tide. The tide, they stood against the tide, but they also got buried by the tide themselves, tied themselves, those churches or individuals that stood. And many of them trying to stand for righteousness or for compassion, many of them got pulled into the system and ended up in a weird way supporting the system instead of really making a difference. I'm curious, what are some of the main, for lack of better terms, myths that are embedded in traditional retellings of the discovery of America?

Like what are some things that maybe, and I think we've made some corrections, right? Like we don't even, at least in many circles, we don't celebrate Columbus Day anymore. Did we get rid of that recently or um oh no no natives natives have gotten rid of it okay yeah and some churches have decided and denominations have decided yeah we're not gonna we're not gonna call it this anymore or the woke people okay have decided oh we shouldn't call this columbus day we should call it indigenous people's day yeah because i have seen okay so i have seen there has been some of that you'll find it on google on google calendar it'll put indigenous people day but the but the government i mean it's still an official holiday is it okay you know columbus day is still an official holiday. It's never been that that has never been undone.

You know, things are happening. Just recently, the Child Welfare Act, the Native sovereignty position about the adoption and fostering of our Native children. We had a law in place that someone was trying to change that law, and we took it clear to the Supreme Court and won. But you don't hear about it on the news yeah you got you got to go to native news online we do have news sources if you really are interested in what's happening with native people you know use google get out there there are native sources that are that are uh that tell the good and the bad when good things happen great, great. And so we understand, I mean, for me, I think most of us understand that we're not going to go to war with America and take the land back. We're way past that point. But there are things that can be done if we could find ways

to become family. But part of it is that we're in this dysfunctional family right now. And the family, even the family of America is so dysfunctional that how are we going to do, how are we going to get counseling to actually, I mean, how do you deal with this stuff with the native people, which is only 1% of the population now? Because colonialism was so successful successful about wiped us out. We're only 1% of the population when everybody's all hung up on whether I'm, you know, am I Democrat? Am I Republican? Am I, am I progressive? Am I conservative? Am I somewhere in the middle? And what I really care about is whether or not I can feed my family and things like that. You know, how am I going to get past all this and care about

what is happening to Native Americans? But again, there seems to be a parable by Jesus about the least of these. I'm curious, how do Native people, generally speaking, view American politics? Like, are there many Republican, hardcore Republicans or hardcore Democrats among Native people? Or do they view American politics from a distance as that's not our game? Well, I can only give you my perspective on this, okay? You know, living five years on a reservation in northern Arizona, the Hopi Reservation, I found out that most Natives there voted Democrat. But what's interesting to me is there are hardcore Republican and conservative Native Americans, politically conservative.

In my perspective, it's because they've fallen into this whole narrative of because of the way that their churches have approached this. They think, well, the church, I'm a Christian now. I'm a Christian. I need to go with what Christianity is doing. And so if their church becomes that way, they follow what their church does. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As politics shapes the church, then when people come into the church, they adopt that kind of political position, whatever that may be, which America is predominantly, you know, most evangelical Christians would, if they identify

the political party, it would be Republican, right? So you said 1% of the population now is Native. What percentage of that percentage would be Christian in your estimation? I'm sure there's data on this, but is it like a really small percentage? Yes, the data, between 5% to 10. Would be churchgoers. Okay. That's still a lot more people than, I mean, so if you take, what, 330 million, 1%, so about three to four million Native people in America, so.

Five and a half million. Five and a half million. So we're talking at least half of them, three, four, 500,000 Native American Christians-ish, somewhere in there. I mean, that's, that's a. So where American Christians-ish, somewhere in there. That's a... So let me ask you. Yeah.

Who are the Christian leaders? Who are the Christian evangelical voices out there? Right. You know? Well, you know, you can name Asian voices, leaders out there. You can name African American leaders out there. But where are the Native leaders that you can say are teachers in the body of Christ or recognized or valued or that way? Well, I only know, I know you, Mark Charles, Rene Begay.

There you go. Do you know Anna Ross, by any chance? Yes. Okay. Yeah. I had her speak at a conference a couple of months ago. Randy Woodley, Richard Twist, Randy Wood months ago. Randy Woodley, Richard Twist. Randy Woodley became. Randy Woodley, yeah. Yes.

But again, those voices are just beginning to emerge now. And most people don't know. I know who they are just because I've done a small bit of research on this. Christianity Today, I was part of a webinar with some Native voices. Renee Begay, Randy Woodley, and others. And I was so glad that Christianity Today was giving voice to, specifically to our Native people, to speak on different subjects. But think about this. After 400 years of missionary work and the fact that, you know, we do have Native believers. But let me tell you another sad thing. Among our Native people, there are many Native ministers

who are in a place where they completely have westernized. They don't permit any Native culture. Many of them probably, I haven't gotten any pushback yet, but many probably wouldn't like the First Nations version because it's too cultural. Would they say that Native culture is, I don't know the words in their mouth, but has too many pagan elements that

to try to bring over Native culture into the faith is going to dilute the faith? Is that the argument? Yeah. Okay. That's the argument. There are a lot of native people, or probably more native people, that have that perspective

than there are those that have the other perspective that says, no, we believe the gospel, the good news of Jesus, can be planted as a seed in any culture and grow and grow. And it will have cultural forms. It will transform some of the culture. But any more than what we have as American Christianity today, westernized Christianity, is nothing, almost nothing like what the early church had. is nothing, almost nothing like what the early church had. The way we do things, there's so much cultural baggage included in it that it's hard to separate out. And that was part of the problem is when the Europeans came over,

they wanted to not only bring the gospel to us, they wanted us to adapt to their culture in way of following Jesus. and way of following Jesus. You know, I remember reading of stories where before a native person would be accepted as a member of a church, they first had to build a stick house. They had to put a fence around that house and then they would be candidates for baptism.

Okay. So what kind of gospel is that? I mean, do you think Jesus would tell those Gentiles out there? Well, first you got to build a synagogue, you know, and you got to learn how to attend synagogue. Oh, and then you got to learn how to speak Hebrew because that's Greek language is pagan. So if you learn to speak Hebrew, that's the sacred language. Well, we had to learn to speak hebrew because because this greek language is pagan so if you learn to speak hebrew that's the sacred language well we had to learn to speak english that was another thing before you were baptized you had to learn to speak english um things like that so it's it's really a mixed bag

and and my my desire isn't to produce guilt in anyone it's if anything anything, let's have compassion. Let's have understanding, and let's be real about this. Well, here's one of my, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this. I'll just be honest with my question, I guess. One of my interests in Native American Christianity is I feel like Native people are well positioned to help the American evangelical church see itself as a separate entity from the empire. Native people, when they look at America, and I really appreciate the nuance you've given, that it's not all bad. You know, there's shared love for the land, even, even, you know, military service and stuff. So it's not, it's not like a monolithic binary black and white, everything's terrible view. Um, and, and I think the church can have a similar perspective. Doesn't mean, you know, we should see America as a horrible, terrible place, but it still is an empire. And the Bible's written

not from the perspective of empire, but from the perspective of the people of God living under this distant empire. And so I feel like I would love for native Christian leaders to help the broader evangelical church to say, here's maybe a better way to view our kind of political or national identity rather than intertwining it with the empire, separating it from the empire. That's, I don't know, I'm just interested in that perspective. Well, I think Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, we all have different stories of how the empire has affected us and harmed us and, and marginalized us and how it has favored a certain religion and it has

favored a certain skin color, so to speak. And so, yeah, I think, I think we might be the hope of America. No, exactly. To repent of these things, to see things under a new light, and to become better followers of Jesus. Yeah. No, I love that. Terry, I've taken you over the time that I have asked you to be on the show, and I have many more questions and thoughts, but we'll have to save that for another time. and um but we have to say that for another time thank you so much for the conversation for your work in this area and especially for your work in overseeing the first nations translation i mean that must have been a an exhilarating but also challenging project and and i'm sure you're

excited to see it come to fruition so um where can people find you if people want to get a hold of you if you even want people to get a hold of you. Well, we, we have a Facebook. I I'm on Facebook, Terry Wildman. You can, I don't accept everybody, but I usually accept people that really honestly want to connect. But I also, we have a Facebook page for the first nation version that keeps people updated on what's going on. My wife and I are recording artists. We write songs. We have a

Rain Song Music page. Our website is, you can get there two ways, firstnationsversion.com or rainsongmusic.com. That'll take you to the same web type site, just different places. You can see, listen to our music there. You can read about, the, the, you can read about the first nation version, how it came about. You can meet some of the, the, uh, other natives that were involved as a council members and translation reviewers. You can see their pictures there and read a little bit about who they are and how we, and why and how we did this project is all on our website. i'm on it right now this is really cool wow look at you and your guitar and your

yeah love it all right well terry thank you again and appreciate the conversation and uh hope you have a blessed day miigwetch bizzendawieg thank you for listening. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.