In Native and Christian: Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada, 132. New York and London: Routledge, 1996.

Marie Therese Archambault, OSF (Hunkpapa Lakota) is a Franciscan Sister and is originally from the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota.  She holds several advanced degrees in theology, spirituality, and religious studies and has served in a variety of teaching and ministry positions throughout the United States.  Archambault is currently the Native Urban Outreach Facilitator for the Tekakwitha Conference, a national organization serving native people in the Roman Catholic Church.  She wrote this essay for The People (National Catholic Educational Association, 1992), a collaborative collection of reflections by native Catholics on the North American experience in light of the Columbus Quincentenary.  Archambault's contribution focuses on the meaning of evangelization in contemporary native communities.  She engages in historical analysis and personal reflection that together point to the need to "de-evangelize" native people in order to facilitate religious self-determination.  Believing that enculturation represents a better approach to the formation of native Christian identities, she analyzes the important social and cultural factors that will affect this "praxis of evangelization."  By highlighting the spiritual and psychological legacy of the colonization process, Archambault emphasizes the personal dimension of the liberation struggle.

Marie Therese Archambault, February 13, 2006:

This past year I was invited to be a retreatant in a Canku Wakan retreat, which is the Cursillo transformed into a Lakota format. On the first morning of the retreat at the Sioux Spiritual Center in Howe, SD, we gathered in the little chapel exquisite in its Lakota decor and symbolism, waiting in silence for our director to start the first retreat day. Except for three out of the total 30 people either attending or giving the retreat, all of us were Lakota. A Lakota Deacon was the Itancan, that is the leader or head man, while others on the retreat team had Lakota names for their roles in the retreat. The Itancan opened the day with a quotation. It went like this:

We have to go beyond the white gospel in order to perceive its truth. When we do this, we shall meet Jesus as our brother and recognize him as one who has been with us all along as the quiet servant, the one who has strengthened us through these centuries. Then we will know that the cry of Jesus Christ from the cross was the cry of our people at Wounded Knee, Sand Creek and other places of the mass death of our people. He was our companion during these years of our invisibility in this society. This same Jesus is the one who challenges us to grow beyond ourselves. This is the challenge of evangelization. If we take up the challenge, we shall sense that he is with us and be glad. This is the heart and core meaning of the Gospel.

It was from the article which I wrote years ago! In truth I had forgotten about that article until it was read that morning when the leader named me as the writer. What a blessing for me to hear that paragraph read to open the retreat. I recalled the time of writing the article was a time of great, inner darkness for me. I saw no real presence of our people in the Church which I had served my entire life as a religious. Many years I taught in the Catholic school system before I finally allowed myself to face the reality that very few of my people could ever attend Catholic school because of the expense. That thought plus the absence of my people in the greater U.S. Catholic Church in the many levels of ministry, of Indians ministering to other Indians, left me feeling myself in the dark.

That morning I looked around the room and thought "God’s ways are not our ways." For God, by whatever name, Woniya, Wakan Tanka, Jesus Christ, the Great Mysterious One, the One Beyond All Thought, obviously had been at work among us through many people, tribal and others as well. The group in the chapel stood as witness to that work and that presence.

In the years since the article first appeared in the 1992 edition of The People in honor of the Quincentennial of Columbus' landing and which later Professor Treat included in his anthology, Native and Christian, indeed, the landscape of Native Catholic people vis-a-vis the Roman Church in the U.S. has begun to change slowly and gradually. It is just beginning to be itself, sharing the same faith but looking very different than the greater U.S. Church. Though we have come through some difficult conflictive moments as a Conference, we have survived those and are experiencing a new, smaller, poorer, purified Conference. We are not yet deeply aware of ourselves as Catholics. Nor are we independent and guiding our own Church members. We will probably continue in this paternalistic mode until we are ready at a deep level to change to a new mode. Or, until the Living Spirit of life moves us beyond where we are now.

Who are we for this 21st century? We are still working on how to name ourselves: American Indians, Native Americans, Native Christians, Catholic Natives, Indigenous, Aboriginal, First Nations or by our traditional tribal names. We want to name ourselves. Maybe these names will seem new for today, but they will be ancient in their origin. Many of us have already done this. Others are waiting.

What has happened to us as we, the survivors of the first dwellers in this country, enter the 21st century? Partially we continue as before, one hundred to five hundred years before, quiet and watching. For sure, we continue largely our passive role within the Church. Despite this, we are feeling our way, we are finding new and different ways to symbolize first, our Native identity as people who can live in and not sell ourselves to this ‘money’ society. In this we are following the path of our ancestors who found ways to allow the Sacred Presence to guide them. In such a way our people have always grown greater through listening to the Great Spirit of life [Orenda, Manitou, Wakan Tanka, Woniya, etc.] among us.

Sister Kateri Mitchell, of the Mohawk Nation, the Executive Director of the Conference has asked me update our First Communion Book and to create a book for First Reconciliation also. As I work on this sacramental project and mentally place before my mind's eye, the students for whom I prepare this text, they no longer fit within the strict boundary of 2nd grade seven year olds. We have learned through these years that our first communicants vary in age from seven year olds all the way through elementary school ages, through Junior high, High School and into adulthood. It presents a quandary for me to revise and prepare these textbooks which introduce the Catholic Church’s Sacraments to Native people of all ages within that wide age range at once. I wait for inspiration to be given me whenever I spend time, praying or working with our people.

This wide age group tells us that many of our Native Catholic families do not access parishes to enroll their children for sacramental life on a regular basis. Yet, the sacramental life is the core and identity of the Catholic Church. Why? Perhaps because they live at subsistence level and do not have necessary funds to enroll the children or do not have deep enough roots into the Catholic Church. Frequently then, our people are among the ‘unchurched.’ This means they, as a total group, do not participate in a Parish community but stay at the margins except on great and obvious feast days like Easter and Christmas. There are many reasons for this, not necessary to discuss here. But this is fact. As we enter the 21st century, 75% or more of our Native people now live in urban areas and not on the reservations where they first encountered the Catholic Church. In this reality, we seek new ways to lead us within the Church.

One such Indian-led movement lives in South Dakota among the Lakota/Dakota Catholic people in and through the Cursillo Retreats mentioned above. These Native Catholics have taken the Cursillo retreat and made it Lakota/Dakota from inside out renaming it the Canku Wakan [Holy Road] retreat. This is not a paternalistic experience but an experience of the people of the Lakota Christ leading, inviting and ministering to other people. My experience in such a retreat still burns like a flame and lights the darkness within me. In its light I see the Indigenous Christ coming to meet us, dancing, filled with positive energy leading us in a way that we recognize as our way, but know not where it will lead yet. In the Canku Wakan retreats, many of our people are willing to follow that Christ. That One from the light leads us first to ourselves for healing, then back out to others. And he says: Hau, Mitakuye Oyasin! "I greet you, all my relatives!"

© 2008 by James Treat