WHAT WOULD ETHICAL COLONIALISM LOOK LIKE?

Credit: http://www.tribalnationsmaps.com/ 

“What would ethical colonialism look like?   Is it even possible?”

Jacqueline Keeler posed these bewildering questions to us last Sunday at the White Privilege Conference in Kansas City. She began her speech by recounting her maternal Navajo & Yankton Dakota lineages, which made me re-member why Torah/Old Testament passages begin similarly. 

This afternoon, for complex reasons, I began researching the history of the Pawnee Nation (or the Chahiksichahiks) indigenous to what is now central Nebraska. In 1700, the Pawnee people numbered over 60,000; by 1900, they were down to 600 - a mere 1% of their former population. This is why people use "genocide" to describe what White supremacy in the United States did to American Indian nations. Despite this, by 2000, fewer than 60,000 people lived in central Nebraska, and the population has been steadily declining - so much so, the government is still paying families to move to rural towns. So why did White folks need the Chahiksichahiks' land again?

Crushingly, the more I read and listen, the more I realize White supremacy committed this genocide with the economic and theological endorsement of White Christianity. The U.S. government routinely employed White Christian missionaries to "civilize" American Indians - especially their children. As with U.S. enslavement of Africans and so many other oppressions, White supremacist Christians justified decimating American Indian families & imprisoning them on reservations because it led to the conversion of heathen souls; they used the Bible to argue slavery and colonization were not only permissible but also moral.

Only four generations back, my Czech ancestors directly benefited from the 1862 Homestead 

Act when they emigrated to the Midwest. Then, like now, the U.S. government was telling incongruent stories the public failed to recognize. Though in treaties signed with American Indians, the U.S. referred to settlers only as "Whites," they published "free land!" advertisements in many European languages (including Czech, my great-great grandparents' language) because Whiteness as an ethnicity - as a language, people, culture - did not exist. 

Before racism existed, many poor workers from Africa, Europe & the Americas lived, worked, started families and organized together to demand profits, power and land be shared fairly with everyone. But the people with the most power said NO. Land plus money equals power, and they wanted more of it! To preserve their money and power and prevent interracial uprisings, wealthy, European, land-owning men (many Christian) invented and systematized White supremacist patriarchy and White-Brown-Black racism by criminalizing interracial organizations and relationships and incentivizing poor European immigrants to identify as a new, ever-expanding White majority culture. (See Chapter 2: "Drawing the Color Line" of Howard Zinn's People's History.)

Throughout U.S. history, White supremacist Christians have furthered this racist campaign by (A) crying "I'm persecuted, righteous & hard-working, so give me ___ (land, money, protection, etc.) because I deserve it!" and (B) using the Bible to endorse slavery and colonialism and prohibit people of different "races" from being "unequally yoked together" (2 Corinthians 6:14). Today in Missouri, the Klu Klux Klan still uses this argument on their homepage:

This is a Christian organization, and none but Christians may join the KKK. Reverence for God and obedience to His commandments are the only true sources of wisdom and understanding. The foundations of America were laid by men who feared God and openly confessed the Lord Jesus Christ. They were moral and lived a life shaped by their obedience to the laws of God. The history of the Founding Fathers and of our Nation is the history of a racially pure family. The Klan seeks to preserve that history and family. We cannot hope to be successful if we are in violation of God's Word. Therefore, we obey it as our understanding declares it unto us.

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?" II Cor. 6:14

As we light the Fiery Cross to dispel the darkness around us and bring light to the night, so must we dispel those who would bring darkness into our midst. This includes the illegitimate and klandestine Klan orders I have spoke against previously... This Order will strive forever to maintain the God-given supremacy of the White Race. To preserve the blood purity, integrity, cultural, and traditions of the White Christian Race in America.

This is White supremacy's Creation story. This is also the story of how poor, hard-working people in the U.S. were taught and tricked into competing and blaming one another for what they lack instead of questioning those with the most money and power. My Czech (and French-Canadian, English, Swedish, Spanish, Irish, Blue-Belly Yankee) ancestors literally cashed in on this story, and here I stand today.

So (as a church friend who also attended the conference challenges me to consider) what am I - a 2017 Jesus follower born the White daughter of a Christian missionary family in the United States - supposed to feel and do about this heart-wrenching history? If I can no longer proudly identify as a Christian nor a U.S. American, who am I? I have been asking myself these questions since 2009, and I still don't know all the answers. But the more I read and listen, the more I see the Way forward - at least as it pertains to me.

For me, Jesus embodies the Way forward. After everything else I once believed and held dear was stripped away by Truth-telling, the living Body of Christ was all I had left. Jesus gives me meaning, purpose, direction. Why? Without Jesus' example, I might wallow in a place of guilt or apathy or helplessness or judgment. But His Way provides a path to redemption and mercy - yes, even for (recovering) White supremacists like me. My parents taught me salvation from sin requires the ABCs - admission, belief, confession:

• I admit I have benefited from and participated in the sin of White supremacy - of declaring "my way is the best way" and demanding I get my way, or else. 
• I believe the Way forward is to push back as Jesus did and many others have also done - to push back against false, divisive identities by replacing them with Truth-telling communities that embody the Kin-dom of G-d on Earth. 
• I confess this is the work to which I commit my life.

Thus, as I understand Jesus, to arrive at a merciful redemption requires we first pass through repentance and justice - which may feel and look, as Jesus' describes it, like "a camel passing through the eye of a needle." This brings me back to Jacqueline's questions: “What would ethical colonialism look like? Is it even possible?” My body tells me NO. No those are oxymorons because colonialism cannot survive without supremacy. So if our nation continues to colonize others’ bodies, lands and cultures to maintain supremacy of the rich, what are Jesus’ followers to do, individually and collectively? What options do we have? To what extent can we decolonize? I know how to decolonize my body, but how can we decolonize our communities? Can we? If we cannot go backwards, can we start over? Somewhere Jesus said we must get born again. What does that mean? Is being born again like starting over? How do we do it?

I have almost no idea. But when I look at Jesus, I see a man who preached in puzzles but clearly lived in love. He lived under an increasingly international empire yet spent his life Truth-telling among his own people. When people talked of revolution and a new kingdom, Jesus told them the kin-dom of G-d is already among you. Where people saw dead girls, Jesus told little girls to rise up - talitha kum! He told religious leaders to stop stealing from the poor. He told executioners to condemn others only if they themselves were perfect. He told the rich man to sell everything & give away the profits. He told us we cannot serve both G-d and Money. He told Nicodemus to turn his theology upside down and start over - to be born again. He didn’t just talk about Samaritans, he drank with them. He didn’t just talk about dangerous women and men, he invited them close enough to experience the healing gift of touch. He didn’t just talk about rich religious leaders exploiting the poor, he overturned their tables and kicked them out of the temple. He didn’t just preach “love your enemies,” he forgave them. He didn’t just make promises, he kept them. And for all this - religious, government and business leaders executed him. Yet for as long as the Kin-dom of G-d remains among us, Jesus still loves and pushes back.

So that’s what I’m trying to do. Here am I, trying to channel my inner little girl, coaxing her to rise up in my own community after many here gave me up for dead. Here am I, a recovering White supremacist back in the Midwest, intentionally making my home among people who identify as American Christians (often in that order). Here am I, trying to learn how to love and push back at the same time. Here am I, trying to live out - in a new, born-again Way - the integrity, accountable discipleship and counter-cultural mission my parents instilled in me. It’s not my fault I was “born guilty,” born with this privilege upon privilege upon privilege. It's not my parents' or my grandparents' fault either. But it is my responsibility to act on my faith. I am convinced our world wasn’t always, shouldn’t be and doesn’t have to be this way because another Way is possible; indeed, it has already begun. The Kin-dom of G-d is here, in our midst. We have only to embody and be willing to die for it.

So in what possible Way can we dismantle White supremacist colonialism of American Indians in the United States? I have almost no idea, but I am committed to finding and acting on more. With this intent, I’m going to keep asking American Indian people and listening to their answers. One answer Jacqueline suggested last Sunday is to “honor the treaties.” Here in Kansas City, where people from 98 American Indian tribes live, indigenous history is more visible than in most places I’ve lived. And yet, I still do not personally know anyone who identifies as American Indian. Thankfully, this isolation is a White supremacy tactic I can push back against. Here are some ideas I have:

• Tomorrow, I may begin by visiting the Huron Indian Cemetery in downtown Kansas City, KS.

• Next week, I may begin again by finally reading Vine Deloria, Jr.’s “Custer Died for Your Sins.”

• Next month, I may begin again by accepting the invitation to attend Kansas City Indian Center’s Culture Night potluck, which an indigenous Water Protector extended to me at a Dakota Access Pipeline protest last fall.

• This summer, I may begin again by supporting the Anishinaabe grandmothers when they pass through Kansas City along their Missouri River Water Walk.

• This fall, I may begin again by celebrating Indigenous People’s Day at Haskell Indian Nations University. 

• This winter, I may begin again by inviting Christian friends to visit & dialogue about the Shawnee Indian Mission State Historic Site.

• Throughout my seasons, I may begin again and again and again by being open to new ideas that may reveal I - my perceptions, my beliefs, my way - am wrong.

• Before I die, I may begin still again by leaving what little land and monetary inheritance I may have to the people forcibly removed from the land I now occupy. (A friend from church, who also attended last week's conference, suggested this as a way individuals might move toward reparations.)

How and when will you begin? And how might we weave our beginnings together and envision a community that embodies repentance and justice?

As the Anishinaabe grandmothers say along their Nibi "Water" Walks - Every step is a prayer.

    "Gii Bimosayaan" (We Walk)

The Kin-dom of Humus: Lenten rituals for re-membering Jesus

As an adult, observing Lent for forty days feels more mystical than orthodox because my childhood family’s Christian tradition only marked two days—Good Friday and Easter. This year, I have labored long Lenten hours in the community garden across from my house, which makes me marvel about growing faith and food—about the fun as well as the many, many failures I’ve experienced with both, about how both can break us apart and bring us together, about why some of us have an ever-increasing stack while others of us are literally dying from lack, about what could happen if more of us ask why.

In a society as broken as ours, where the “kin-dom of G-d” Jesus preached seems not-yet, I find it difficult to follow (let alone share) Jesus’ “Don’t worry…” philosophy and equally difficult to believe his romantic promise of “All these things will be given to you.” Sure, I can trust Jesus’ words for myself, since I’ve always had more than enough food, clothing and shelter.

But I cannot embrace Jesus’ Way without envisioning people like my friend Andrew. He and his family live in northern Kenya, where a severe drought is slowly creating famine. Though Andrew often “looks at the birds of the air,” he does so not from awe but rather from frustration because the heavenly Father to whom he prays is feeding the birds from his family’s already struggling garden! Some saints can muster up the generosity and hospitality necessary to welcome such birds, but most days I cannot summon such radical acceptance, such inner-grace. Instead, I angrily judge those creatures as guilty garden thieves and contrive ways to keep them out.

If G-d uses meager gardens to provide for the birds of the air, where is the divine provision for families like Andrew’s? What, I ask, does Jesus’ promise mean for those of us who are dying from lack of faith or food? These are some of the many questions I ask Jesus while we are working in the garden. And sometimes, if I’m listening, I hear him ask me the same questions. Those quiet, desperate moments are when I most watch and wait and pray for enough courage and understanding to walk in the Way of re-membrance.

When the pain of injustice confounds me, as it so often does, one Way I find solace is to replace my busy rushing with stopping to kneel or lay down in the dust, bow my head toward the earth and fold my hands into the soil. Such full body prayer grounds me in the mystery of who I am, who I am not and who G-d might be. Somehow, the world makes more sense from down there. It feels safer, smaller, slower, simpler. Even if I try, I cannot hurry up the growing process. Becoming takes time. When my hands become soiled, I feel at home and can more readily remember from where I have come and to where I am going. Sometimes, when I’m grounded, I even look forward to returning to the dust. A mother several seasons wiser than me once suggested I can feel that way only because I’m young, healthy and have no children who depend on me. She may be right. But whatever the reason, that’s how I feel sometimes.

Ironically, though I am the eldest of four siblings and as such desperately strive to create order from chaos, it calms me to see, smell, hear, touch, taste evidence that proves—despite my most valiant efforts—while I am always invited to partake of life, I will never be able to control it. Never. (And if you get to know me well, you will thank G-d for that. I know I do!) Life is bigger, smaller, older, younger than me. Life began before and will go on after me. And yet, I am part of its whole.

The place in the community garden that most reminds me of this holy mystery is the compost pile.

People often confuse compost with soil. Though they look similar, they are not the same. Another word for compost is humus (not to be confused with hummus, which comes from tahini and creamed chickpeas). Humus is the organic— living—part of soil. I love this humus, this compost. And because I was a language teacher before I became a gardener, I love words that are rooted in and remind me of humus. These include words like:

Humor
Humble
Human
Healthy
Humility
Holy
Whole
Home
Heal
Heat
Hum
Hmm…

Anyways. Words. Yes. I was telling you why I love compost. When it’s well-tended, compost delights and fills me with awe, joy and energy. I relish the moment when the house or office compost bucket grows full, so I can walk—sometimes happily humming, other times heavily “hmming…”—over to our South Early Street garden and dump what some call "waste" into the first of four bins. For when those cores, shells, grounds, papers and peelings are all "pressed down and shaken together,” the process of creating humus begins.

This simple ritual feels both defiant and sacred. Defiant because compost physically re-members, restores, reconnects what society systematically dis-members, disappears, buries or otherwise tries to forget. It also feels sacred because compost invites us to participate in a transfiguration that results first in redemption—a reclamation through union of what was once lost through division—and this redemption ultimately leads to rebirth.

If you struggle to believe in resurrection, sit in front of a compost bin for a few months and wait. Watch what happens. If you pay attention, you may notice how something dead can be involuntarily brought to life again—often more vigorously than life wrought through intentional human effort. But to get born again, first something must die.

The decomposition of becoming humus mirrors the composition of becoming human. Both involve layers and cycles of heat and time. According to Genesis in Jewish and Christian traditions, G-d simply said, "Let there be light!" and there was, like striking a match. Creating humanity, however, required more time and actions as well as words. G-d said, "Let us create humankind in our own image," and carefully commenced doing so with water, humus and a breath of wind.

Similar to becoming humus, becoming human requires humility. If we are never crushed and cooked down by the heat of life's layers, we can never be transformed. If we want to be reborn, we must first endure the hell fire that soils our appearance and turns upside down our ways of understanding. To generate the heat necessary to create humus, a gardener must carefully layer what is new, fresh and green between what is old, dry and brown. And every so often, the gardener also has to shake up the pile or overturn it in order to ensure all the layers interact. If done well, a compost pile can even serve as a water heater. (I have experienced a compost-heated outdoor shower, and it is exhilarating!)

But like the balance between youthful energy and well-seasoned wisdom, a pile with too little brown creates a hot, rotting stench that offends everyone, while too much brown creates cold, lifeless stagnation. Often the cost of preventing change and preserving things as-they-are is petrification—being petrified by fear can turn us into stone. Likewise, excluding all that is old, dry and traditional can create a hot mess. Such a mess leaves no room for breathing, listening, waiting, sinking, settling down and settling in. Devoid of air pockets, food scraps just rot because the light cannot get in.

In his song “Anthem,” Leonard Cohen also “looks at the birds of the air.” He opens with, 

“The birds they sang at the break of day. 

‘Start again,’ I heard them say… 

 Every heart to love will come, but like a refugee. 

Ring the bells that still can ring. 

Forget your perfect offering. 

There is a crack, a crack in everything. 

That's how the light gets in.”

 

Like humility and heat, humor also hastens transfiguration. Until we crack open enough to crack up and laugh a little at our fears, failures and imperfections, we cannot surrender them to the pile and begin to embody another Way. Leaving our lives in those layers requires us to re-Lent and release, to let go and exchange our striving and worrying for watching and waiting.

And so Earth invites us to participate in her rituals of re-membering, which give birth to humus—a creation process we will never be able to control. Only the Invisible can do that—those tiny fungi, worms, bacteria, all the microorganisms that enliven organic matter. Some call this science. I call it magic.

Likewise, becoming holy human—re-membering who we are, from where we have come and to where we are going—this also requires surrender to the Invisible, to the love, joy, doubt, sorrow, anger, confusion, epiphanies and other enlivening experiences that slowly heal what's been shattered. Some call this faith. I call it mystery.

I’d like to close with a passage from the wise Kentucky farmer, Wendell Berry. This is from “The Body and the Earth,” a chapter in his book entitled The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Here he teaches us how to re-member:

“To try to heal the body alone is to collaborate in the destruction of the body. Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation… Past the scale of the human, our works do not liberate us—they confine us. They cut off access to the wilderness of Creation where we must go to be reborn--to receive the awareness, at once humbling and exhilarating, grievous and joyful, that we are a part of Creation, one with all that we live from and all that, in turn, lives from us… Healing, on the other hand, complicates the system by opening and restoring connections among the various parts—in this way restoring the ultimate simplicity of their union. When all the parts of the body are working together, are under each other's influence, we say that it is whole; it is healthy. The same is true of the world, of which our bodies are parts. The parts are healthy insofar as they are joined harmoniously to the whole.”

And so springtime and Lent are about re-membering and becoming both humus and human. Old and new, ancient and young, dead and alive, past and present, wisdom and passion, tradition and imagination, orthodoxy and mysticism, contemplation and action, wind and water, light and darkness; altogether are necessary for transfiguration, for redemption, for resurrection—for compost. We need each other precisely because we are different. Without you, I cannot be born again. Only after a hellish heat cooks our wet-on-dry layers can the pile settle down, cool down and reveal as humus what once was separate, and from this union raise up new life.

Whatever we choose to call it, this watch-and-wait Way echoes the always-enough ecology of the birds and lilies in Jesus' sermon. Why are we striving and stacking up for tomorrow? What we need is now. Here. This. If some of us are lacking, what we need for healing is to ask why, to literally re-member what we have dis-membered and to wait for it to become humus so we can become wholly human again.

Mother Teresa once wrote, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” So then, let us gather around the compost bin. Let us invite even those—especially those—with whom we disagree to join us there. Let us watch and wait until we re-member from where we each have come, to where we all are going and why we need each other along the Way.

Perhaps this is part of what Jesus means when he promises if we seek first the kin-dom of G-d, the rest will follow.