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)