Christian church, Native American tribe reconcile

[demoleft]

Source: ap

NEW YORK – Members of one of America's oldest Protestant churches officially apologized Friday — for the first time — for massacring and displacing Native Americans 400 years ago.

"We consumed your resources, dehumanized your people and disregarded your culture, along with your dreams, hopes and great love for this land," the Rev. Robert Chase told descendants from both sides. "With pain, we the Collegiate Church, remember our part in these events."

The minister spoke on Native American Heritage Day at a reconciliation ceremony of the Lenape tribe with the Collegiate Church, started in 1628 in then-New Amsterdam as the Reformed Dutch Church.

The rite was held in front of the Museum of the American Indian in lower Manhattan, where Dutch colonizers had built their fort near an Indian trail now called Broadway, just steps away from Wall Street.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091127/ap_on_re_us/us_native_americans_reconcile

---

it was high time.

[annabanana]

1. This is fitting

Have any other denominations formally apologized?

[Bobbieo]

5. Native Americans are still trying to get the Catholic Church to renounce the

Papal Bull issued in 1493 by Pope Alexander VI declaring Indians to be barbarous nations thus they could be plundered and killed.

[L. Coyote]

17. The right of discovery allowed Christians to claim any lands and people not

already part of a Christian nation, and enslave the pagans.

When will this history be reconciled? When will the concentration camps end? When will stolen lands be restored to their owners?

[SpiralHawk]

22. That's a HUGE issue. The Pope's Inter Caetera Bull is the 'legal' basis

of just about every atrocity ever committed against Native peoples -- including all the land theft and massacres and enslavement.

But the Pope and the Church STILL refuse to revoke this disgusting piece of 'legal' nonsense -- the basis of so much corrupt law in the Americas and Europe.

Here's a piece on it by Valerie Taliman, Navajo.

http://ili.nativeweb.org/ricb.html

[faithnotgreed]

25. thank you for this link spiralhawk

i will go read it now

and thank you to the church and all peoples connected in this ceremony who have taken this (one) step towards some type of healing
may it ripple far and wide

[Sanity Claws]

2. I attended it

It was fascinating.
There was a formal apology by the Church which was formally accepted by the Lenapes.

They then sealed the reconciliation with a wampum exchange, followed by a necklace exchange between two children, a Lenape boy and a little girl of the Collegiate Church.

Lots of music during different parts of the ceremony.

Well worth attending.

[demoleft]

3. it sounds fascinating indeed.

sort of a rite - which is good, because it has to settle emotional wounds. not just shakehands.
i'm sure it was worth attending.

[Bobbieo]

4. Thank you for attending, SC.

[Sanity Claws]

7. Thank you, BobbieO, for telling me about it

The ceremony left me feeling hopeful. The two groups seem to want to focus on educating the children on a different way of life, one that synthesizes the belief system of the two groups.
Do you know of other instances where a group formally apologized or otherwise publicly acknowledged the harm it has done to Native Americans?

[Bobbieo]

10. I do believe the Canadian Prime Minister Harper tried to apologze to

Canada's First Nation tribes, not long ago, for the murder and abuse of some 50,000 Indian children during the infamous Church and Gov't Boarding School years. The apology was not well accepted by tribal members.

[Altoid_Cyclist]

21. Interesting link regarding the apology offered by PM Harper.

Very long read, but very interesting. The link concerns the "schools" that the children were forced to attend.

Excerpt:
Children were kidnapped and taken long distances from their communities in order to attend school. Once there, they were held captive, isolated from their families of origin, and forcibly stripped of their language, religion, traditions and culture. Many Native children grew up with little knowledge of their original culture. Being forced to live with no culture resulted in high suicide rates, difficulties with parenting, drug and alcohol problems, family abuse.

"Then there are testimonies of hundreds of former students whose list of abuses includes kidnapping, sexual abuse, beatings, needles pushed through tongues as punishment for speaking Indigenous languages, forced wearing of soiled underwear on the head or wet bed sheets on the body, faces rubbed in human excrement, forced eating of rotten and/or maggot infested food, being stripped naked and ridiculed in front of other students, forced to stand upright for several hours -- on two feet and sometimes one -- until collapsing, immersion in ice water, hair ripped from heads, use of students in eugenics and medical experiments, bondage and confinement in closets without food or water, application of electric shocks, forced to sleep outside or to walk barefoot in winter, forced labour and on and on."

Read more: http://www.shannonthunderbird.com/residential_schools.htm

[glinda]

12. "Yea, now join our Church". Blech* Sorry. I have zero trust in any Church.

[classysassy]

6. A small gesture

it would be wonderful for all americans to make a very big gesture,admit injustice done to native people of this land.Just 1% of our military budget to help the poorest of our citizens would go a long way in restoring some of the resources the founders stole from them.

[WriteDown]

8. How big a check is the church cutting each tribe?

The apology is nice, but does little for the current conditions on most reservations.

[Sanity Claws]

9. The Church said it will be advocating for the Lenape

I plan to follow this and see what happens.
They said they have already been working on getting Native American culture included in the NYC public school curriculum.

[WriteDown]

23. We shall see....

You have a good attitude though. :)

[Chulanowa]

11. How nice

Now about that land these churches are sitting on...

[TheCML]

15. Give me a break.

By that logic we should all pack up and leave.

[proteus_lives]

16. Bullshit. But you know that.

You ready to give up your house or force your parents to give up theirs?

[Kurska]

20. Don't mind him he just trying to find the most "anti-imperialist" thing to say.

Doesn't matter if it makes sense or if it is mind warpingly stupid, it is all about sounding off, not thinking.

Of course the way the Natives were treated is terrible, but it has happened alot of times throughout history and asking anyone to give back land to settle generations old grievance is beyond foolish and just create more animosity.

[cowcommander]

13. +1

It's a start, acknowledging the wrongs of the past.

[grahamhgreen]

14. +1

[Divine Discontent]

18. Christians that reflect their faith should be commended.

I commend them.

[winyanstaz]

19. As a Native American....I thank the church for apoligising.

It is a good step in the right direction.

[niyad]

24. it's a good start, at least.