MeyerBros --> Carl --> SinsOfTheFathers

Carl: Good morning! You know, I was almost hoping that everyone would be up at Camp Camrec this morning, and we'd arrive here to an empty sanctuary and get off the hook...

On Pine Ridge, many times when a young person speaks publicly, they will begin by first apologizing for speaking before their elders. In a similar way, in our youth and inexperience we would rather sit and be among you for a while before speaking. But since we aren't here long enough for that, we will just ask your forgiveness for presuming to speak before our elders.

Carl: “So tell me, Karissa, what exactly do you guys do there with MCC? I mean, what's a typical day?”

Karissa: You know, the number of times we've been asked that question, you'd think we might have an answer by now. What exactly does a young white Christian couple do in a place where white Christians have attempted genocide in the name of Christ?

Carl: Oh, so it’s not a simple question?

Karissa: We understand our MCC assignment as part of MCC's journey of learning how to be anti-racist.

Carl: In whatever we do, we always try to follow the leadership of Lakota people. And we don't do anything unless we've been invited to. We've helped with or participated in many projects and events, none of which add up to a daily schedule or a regular 9-5 job.

Karissa: Mostly we do a lot of listening. Listening to a speaker at a community meeting, listening to our instructor in our Lakota History class, listening to a passionate grandmother on KILI radio, listening to guests around our kitchen table...

Carl: And on and on. All this listening and learning sounds nice, but the litmus test of listening is action – if our actions never change, our listening isn't worth much.

Karissa: So, last September, I got a phone call from our friend Debra White Plume. She said that in two days, she and others from Pine Ridge were driving to the town of Chamberlain at the edge of their treaty territory. It was exactly 200 years ago that Lewis & Clark had first met the Lakota people on the banks of the Missouri River. A group of actors with period boats and costumes were making their way up the river to commemorate the event.

Carl: Debra and her crew didn’t want to join the commemoration. They planned to confront the re-enactors, to ask them to turn back - not to continue through Lakota territory. She wanted legal observers there, in case the police gave them trouble.

Karissa: Could MCC help?

Carl: Two days’ notice. This is how we work – there is no typical day.

Karissa: Well, we might be able to help, I told her. I'd never been a legal observer, but Carl had training in this area from his time with Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Carl: So two days later, I was on my way to Chamberlain with my notebook and camera in hand. I was there to watch as thirty-five descendants of Red Cloud and Crazy Horse confronted the crew of Lewis and Clark re-enactors and asked them to turn back.

Karissa: The man playing the part of William Clark was his great-great-great-great-great-grandson. He did his best to turn the meeting into a part of the re-enactment – they met the Lakota in military formation and brought out hides for them to sit on. But our friends were not interested in re-enactment.

Carl: Debra's husband Alex White Plume told them, “By coming here and celebrating the beginning of our destruction, you re-open all these old wounds. Your government signed a treaty with our people and ratified it, but has never kept its word... We came here to ask you to turn around... Go back and tell your government to honor the treaties it made with our people.”

Carter Camp, a Ponca man, said, “I see you all here, dressed up funny, in costumes from how your people dressed 200 years ago. Well, look at me. This is who I am, this is how I wear my hair every day. I am not here playing a game... Your great-great-great-grandfather Clark came here with the lie that he came in peace, that America wanted to live in peace with the Indians. We accepted that lie and shared tobacco. You probably believe that lie too -- that's why you're dressed so funny today. But the truth is he wanted our land, and using Lewis and Clark's map your people took everything we had. Behind his friendly words came the army and the missionaries.”

Karissa: Clark tried to reassure the Lakota people that the re-enactors wanted to tell both sides of the story. They claimed that part of the goal of the re-enactment was to bring their two Nations closer together. In fact, they asked the Lakota to join them and speak to their audiences.

Carl: Carter Camp replied: “You have made the same mistake Lewis & Clark made two hundred years ago. Did you ask our people before you came into our land? ... If you really want to learn about Indian people, come to us as human beings; don't come in costumes commemorating the deaths of our people.”

Karissa: Deb White Plume clarified the choice laid before the re-enactors. “You are telling us you have the right to go on, but this is a matter of conscience for you... If you are men, each of you can decide to stand up and say, 'I'm pulling up my tent and getting out of here.'”

Carl: Sometimes, like the Lewis & Clark re-enactors, we have a lot of momentum behind us. They had millions of dollars invested, a full itinerary of events, and the whole machinery of South Dakota's tourism industry behind them. There's a lot of momentum there. A choice to turn around would be very hard.

Karissa: “Turn back.” What does that really mean? Where have I heard those words before? It sounds a little like – repenting, doesn't it?

Carl: Yep, and it's all over the Bible. We could pass out a different Bible verse on repentance to each of you in the congregation and still have more to spare, but we've chosen just a sample for your ears this morning.

Ezekiel 18:30-32 Repent and turn from all your transgressions; otherwise iniquity will be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, Oh house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.

Malachi 3:7 Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, 'How shall we return?'

Matthew 3:1-2 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.'

Acts 26:19-20 'After that, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout the countryside of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance.'

Leviticus 26:39 “And those of you who survive shall languish in the land of your enemies because of their iniquities; also they shall languish because of the iniquities of their ancestors. But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors... if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then will I remember my covenant with Jacob; I will remember also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.”

Karissa: Hold on a second. Can you repeat that first part again?

“And those of you who survive shall languish in the land of your enemies because of their iniquities; also they shall languish because of the iniquities of their ancestors.”

Karissa: Whose iniquities am I languishing for?

“...also they shall languish because of the iniquities of their ancestors...”

Karissa: Their ancestors? Are you saying that the Lewis & Clark re-enactors needed to repent for the sins of their ancestors? Are you saying that I need to repent for the sins of my ancestors? That can't be right...

Carl: Listen...

Exodus 20: 5-6 (From the Ten Commandments) You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Exodus 34: 6-7 “The Lord, the Lord, a God Merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children's children, to the third and fourth generation.”

Lamentations 5:7 Our ancestors sinned, they are no more, and we bear their iniquities.

Karissa: What's going on here? Is this just one of those confusing bits of the Hebrew Bible that we Mennonites prefer to ignore – how about we just flip back to the Sermon on the Mount, right?

Carl: Maybe those passages aren't really about God being petty and unfair, punishing people who did no wrong for no good reason. Maybe these passages just describe how the world works. We inherit all kinds of things from our parents whether we want to or not. We are who we are because of who our ancestors were and what they did. Maybe your ancestors took land that wasn't theirs and passed it on to you. Maybe they stole someone's sacred place of worship and paved it over to build the Walmart where you shop – sorry, I mean the Trader Joe's.

Karissa: Well, I'll admit, living in the Oglala Lakota Nation has really forced me to think about the sins of my ancestors. And let's be clear – most white people don't like to talk about or even think about race, but on Pine Ridge we think about it all the time. When we say “the sins of our ancestors,” we're talking to white people. While I'm living in Porcupine, a day never passes when I am not reminded that I am an invader in this land. I represent the same European immigrants who came to this land and destroyed the Lakota people's way of life. And I also represent the white society that continues today to bring them suffering.

Carl: You see what I mean now. The Lewis & Clark re-enactors are carrying the sins of their ancestors with them down that river. They, and we, carry those sins because through all these years, we're still traveling down the same river, in the same direction. We have not turned back.

Karissa: [Knock, knock] But what do you do when an ancestor's sin comes to visit? [Knock, knock] Do you have a choice whether to let them in? [Knock, knock]

Carl: We are responsible to deal with the situation that life hands to us. Our collective sins of the past and the present are not just knocking at our doors. They are sitting in our living rooms, eating at our dinner tables, and sleeping with us at night. They follow us to work every day and laugh at us over the evening news and between the lines of the daily paper. They are a part of our identities. If we do not find ways to repent of these sins of our ancestors, they may consume us.

Karissa: When we protest the war in Iraq or the destruction of our environment, we may be addressing only symptoms of the real problem. Perhaps the real problem, the root problem, is our relationship to the land we live on and to the people who rightfully own it.

Carl: So what is it exactly that we're supposed to do?

But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors...

Karissa: “Confess their iniquity.” Sometimes, confession is the hardest part. What if our history books opened with this sentence:

Carl: “The nation we live in was founded on two great horrors – the Native Holocaust and the enslavement of Africans.”

Karissa: Confessing our iniquity means learning to tell our own history honestly. Before we can tell our history, we have to learn it!

Carl: We could get into the Lakota’s Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1868 and talk about the stolen Black Hills – but for most of us here that's too far from home. Instead, how about the story of the Duwamish people? We're no experts on the subject, but we did some quick research.

Karissa: The Duwamish welcomed the first settlers into what is now West Seattle in 1851. Four years later they signed the Point Elliott Treaty of 1855, in which they generously agreed to share their homeland with the newcomers. In return for this hospitality, settlers ignored the treaty. Within ten years the fledgling City of Seattle passed a law banning all Duwamish and other Native people from living within the city limits. In 1893 settlers set fire to the last eight Duwamish Longhouses in Seattle.

Carl: But guess what? Like our Lakota friends, the Duwamish are still around. Their tribal chair, Cecile Hansen, is a great-great-grandniece of Si'ahl, for whom Seattle is named. But the Department of the Interior refuses to recognize them as a tribe, saying there are “breaks in the social and political continuity of the tribe”. In other words, although the Duwamish still consider themselves Duwamish, our government declares that we have no obligations to them because we have successfully destroyed them.

Karissa: Our neighbors on Pine Ridge have had to struggle for 200 years to defend their very right to exist. How can we relate honestly with them if we choose to forget that our people now control the land and resources that were once theirs?

if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled...

Carl: “Humbling our hearts.” Arrogance and racism always go hand in hand. How often do we think we have the answers to another community's problems? How often do we do “service” in poor communities, thinking that we know how to do good just because we are privileged and we want to serve others?

Karissa: Crazy Horse said: “We do not disturb you, yet again you say, why do you not become civilized? We do not want your civilization.”

Carl: Maybe Native people know more about civilization than we do. After all, they did build a society with no pollution, no jails, no psych wards, and no homeless.

And they make amends for their iniquities...

Carl: Making amends. Why, that might mean reparations for slavery, returning land to Native peoples. With most white Americans you'll hit a brick wall almost before you can say these words.

Karissa: [Knock, knock] So what do we do when an ancestor's sin comes knocking? [Knock, knock]

“Come on, be realistic. I mean, how far back do you go?” [Knock, knock]

“Well, you can't just give back the land when there's people living on it.” [Knock, knock]

“What, you think we're going to just give all of Seattle back?” [Knock, knock]

“It's just not going to happen.” [Knock, knock]

Malachi 3:7 Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. But you say, 'How shall we return?'

Karissa: 'How shall we return?'

Carl: Now that’s the question we have to keep asking. If we think there's a simple answer, we've gone astray. If we think we need to map out the whole return trip before we even turn around, we'll never start. And it’s not our job to say what repenting will look like. As always, the good news does not come from the privileged, but from the oppressed. Only Native people can tell us what justice will look like for them. We will only know each faulty step as we take it.

Karissa: If we do acts of service only because we want to help others, we're missing something important. It's not Native people who need our help. If anyone needs help, it's us. It's our nation and our white culture and our white identity. We're the ones who don't know who we are. We're the ones who don't know where home is, and who've lost connection to the land we live on. We're the ones who are poisoning ourselves and our world.

Carl: Repent, turn back, confess, humble your heart, make amends...So what would happen if we did all these things?

Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob; I will remember also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with with Abraham, and I will remember the land.

Carl: 2 Chronicles 7:12-15 Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: 'I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place.

Karissa: What prayer will we make in this place?