In Native and Christian: Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada, 157. New York and London: Routledge, 1996.

Kim Mammedaty (Kiowa) graduated from Colgate Rochester Divinity School in 1985 and has served as pastor of First American Baptist Church of Hobart, Oklahoma, and campus pastor of Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma.  She is currently studying Indian law at the University of Minnesota law school in order to continue her work on issues of social justice affecting native people in institutional contexts.  Mammedaty wrote this essay for And Blessed Is She (Harper and Row, 1990), an anthology of sermons by women; it grew out of her concern that native Christians stop accepting the teachings of missionaries uncritically and instead develop their own interpretations of biblical stories.  She locates the tradition of preaching within the specific context of a native Christian community.  Mammedaty emphasizes the importance of personal and collective stories in the life of this community, especially as they work to affirm the community's own distinctive culture and history.

© 2008 by James Treat