For Cardus, the year is ending not with the 12 days of Christmas, but with 12 interviews with indigenous people of faith..Last year was tarnished with 68 churches desecrated, damaged, or destroyed following accusations that “missing” children were buried on indigenous school grounds, but that was so 2021. Cardus, a non-partisan Christian think tank, is wrapping up this year profiling indigenous believers who are predominantly Christians..“[Forty-seven]% of Indigenous people in Canada identify as Christians,” Cardus explained..“The purpose of this project is to affirm and to shed light on the religious freedom of indigenous peoples to hold the beliefs and engage in the practices that they choose and to contextualize their faith within their own cultures.”.The interviews, conducted by Rev. Dr. Andrew P. W. Bennett, challenge some prevailing narratives about history, culture, and Christianity in indigenous history and contemporary life. Marilyn Crowchild of the Blackfoot First Nation told Bennett she grew up Catholic but also doing traditional ceremonies. Her faith made a turning point at the age of 16 shortly after someone she met said his Jesus answered prayers..“One day somebody in my family got sick, and I came and I went to go smudge with the sweet grass. And my prayers weren’t answered. I didn’t see any results,” she recalled to interviewer.“I said, ‘God, if you’re real, please answer my prayers…. God, please heal them.’ And they were healed. And that’s when I saw the results, and that’s when I came to God and I said, “He’s the God who answers my prayers, and I’m going to stick with him.”.Crowchild holds weekly prayer meetings in the Tsuut’ina Nation southwest of Calgary, and called Psalm 86:8-17 a message “to all First Nations. That’s a prayer covering for them to come to God, to come and believe in him.”.She said God is her “high chief” and has made her a missionary to her people..“If he calls me to go to Siksika, or he tells me to go to Morley, or he tells me to go to Brocket and Eden Valley, or anywhere he tells me to go, I go,” she said..“I pray for truth and reconciliation…Jesus loves us all. It doesn’t matter what country they come from, where they live. Jesus has called us to work together, and he’s going to knit us together.” Father Cristino Bouvette was born and raised in Medicine Hat, but has Italian, British, Welsh, Cree, Ojibwe, and Sioux-Dakota in his recent lineage. His first parish was on the Tsuut’ina Nation. He said the gospel should impact culture, and culture should only provide the context in which it is proclaimed and understood..“I worry about what I see happening in our more modern times…It is the idea of there needing to be some kind of a reversal, where our cultures are imposed upon the gospel…” Bouvette said..“We should not impose upon it how we think, or how we live, or what we believe, in order to make it relatable.”.Bouvette said most indigenous people are Christians or have it in their family history and that coercion can’t account for that..“I owe a debt of gratitude to my Indigenous grandmother, who I always called kokum because she insisted on reminding us that we did not have the gospel imposed upon us. We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us because of her time in the residential school or her father’s time in the trade school that he was sent to. No, it was because our family freely chose to receive the saving message of Jesus Christ and lived it and had continued to pass it down,” Bouvette said..“My grandmother was not tricked into becoming something that she didn’t want to be, and then tricked into staying that way for ninety-nine years and eleven months of her life.” Rosella Kinoshameg, a retired nurse on parish council at Wikwemikong, Ontario, recalled having to correct her grandchild who got the wrong impression about her residential school..“[A]s children, we learned our prayers in the [Algonquian] language. And my father played the organ in church all the time. He took us to church every Sunday…when the priest came…[W]hen we went to residential school we had to get up for Mass every morning. We would go across the road on Sundays to the boys’ school that had a bigger chapel,” she said..“Once we were going to Sault Ste. Marie, and on the way I had heard they were demolishing that boys’ school. So I told my husband, I said, ‘Let’s stop and look at where they’re at in this demolition.’… My grandson says, ‘Is that where they made you wash and wash and wash until you became white?’.“I said, ‘Where did you learn that?’ He said, ‘Somebody came to our school, and that’s what they told us.’ I said, ‘Oh.’ So I had to do a little explaining.”.Jeff Decontie is a married father of three in Ottawa who articled for Justice Department and now works in Indigenous services. He said western secularism causes the indigenous more friction with Christianity than traditional spirituality..“My dad’s community, and therefore mine, is Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg. It’s about two hours north of Ottawa. My mom’s from Kahnawake, and she would be a Mohawk Catholic…I was raised entirely in the city, just one of those urban Indigenous people from an Algonquin background,” Decontie explained..“Christianity is the big bad wolf now among some circles, but that sounds like the golden oldies. I think most youths wouldn’t even declare themselves traditional or Christian. They would say, ‘I’m nothing, I’m different, I don’t care.” Well, they are something. They would be secular, and they would be something of a utilitarian ‘Whatever makes you happy.’ That’s the dominant expression for Indigenous youth, just like other non-Indigenous youth.” Maria Lucas, who is a Black Métis lawyer specializing in Aboriginal law, shares a lineage with the Loyalists in Nova Scotia. She said it was harder for her to reconcile Christianity with her heritage, but looking deeper gave her inspiration..“I often think that people think it’s a contradiction to be Indigenous and Catholic. And I find that the more I discover, the more of a fit there seems to be actually,” Lucas said..“The cross is reconciliation; it demonstrates reconciliation within Christianity. It’s how we are reconciled back to the Father. But it also demonstrates, I think, that reconciliation is not an easy journey. It’s going to be very arduous, because the cross is painful, but there’s also a lot of beauty in taking up one’s cross and carrying it. And you’re not doing it alone. You can only do it with grace,” she explained.
For Cardus, the year is ending not with the 12 days of Christmas, but with 12 interviews with indigenous people of faith..Last year was tarnished with 68 churches desecrated, damaged, or destroyed following accusations that “missing” children were buried on indigenous school grounds, but that was so 2021. Cardus, a non-partisan Christian think tank, is wrapping up this year profiling indigenous believers who are predominantly Christians..“[Forty-seven]% of Indigenous people in Canada identify as Christians,” Cardus explained..“The purpose of this project is to affirm and to shed light on the religious freedom of indigenous peoples to hold the beliefs and engage in the practices that they choose and to contextualize their faith within their own cultures.”.The interviews, conducted by Rev. Dr. Andrew P. W. Bennett, challenge some prevailing narratives about history, culture, and Christianity in indigenous history and contemporary life. Marilyn Crowchild of the Blackfoot First Nation told Bennett she grew up Catholic but also doing traditional ceremonies. Her faith made a turning point at the age of 16 shortly after someone she met said his Jesus answered prayers..“One day somebody in my family got sick, and I came and I went to go smudge with the sweet grass. And my prayers weren’t answered. I didn’t see any results,” she recalled to interviewer.“I said, ‘God, if you’re real, please answer my prayers…. God, please heal them.’ And they were healed. And that’s when I saw the results, and that’s when I came to God and I said, “He’s the God who answers my prayers, and I’m going to stick with him.”.Crowchild holds weekly prayer meetings in the Tsuut’ina Nation southwest of Calgary, and called Psalm 86:8-17 a message “to all First Nations. That’s a prayer covering for them to come to God, to come and believe in him.”.She said God is her “high chief” and has made her a missionary to her people..“If he calls me to go to Siksika, or he tells me to go to Morley, or he tells me to go to Brocket and Eden Valley, or anywhere he tells me to go, I go,” she said..“I pray for truth and reconciliation…Jesus loves us all. It doesn’t matter what country they come from, where they live. Jesus has called us to work together, and he’s going to knit us together.” Father Cristino Bouvette was born and raised in Medicine Hat, but has Italian, British, Welsh, Cree, Ojibwe, and Sioux-Dakota in his recent lineage. His first parish was on the Tsuut’ina Nation. He said the gospel should impact culture, and culture should only provide the context in which it is proclaimed and understood..“I worry about what I see happening in our more modern times…It is the idea of there needing to be some kind of a reversal, where our cultures are imposed upon the gospel…” Bouvette said..“We should not impose upon it how we think, or how we live, or what we believe, in order to make it relatable.”.Bouvette said most indigenous people are Christians or have it in their family history and that coercion can’t account for that..“I owe a debt of gratitude to my Indigenous grandmother, who I always called kokum because she insisted on reminding us that we did not have the gospel imposed upon us. We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us because of her time in the residential school or her father’s time in the trade school that he was sent to. No, it was because our family freely chose to receive the saving message of Jesus Christ and lived it and had continued to pass it down,” Bouvette said..“My grandmother was not tricked into becoming something that she didn’t want to be, and then tricked into staying that way for ninety-nine years and eleven months of her life.” Rosella Kinoshameg, a retired nurse on parish council at Wikwemikong, Ontario, recalled having to correct her grandchild who got the wrong impression about her residential school..“[A]s children, we learned our prayers in the [Algonquian] language. And my father played the organ in church all the time. He took us to church every Sunday…when the priest came…[W]hen we went to residential school we had to get up for Mass every morning. We would go across the road on Sundays to the boys’ school that had a bigger chapel,” she said..“Once we were going to Sault Ste. Marie, and on the way I had heard they were demolishing that boys’ school. So I told my husband, I said, ‘Let’s stop and look at where they’re at in this demolition.’… My grandson says, ‘Is that where they made you wash and wash and wash until you became white?’.“I said, ‘Where did you learn that?’ He said, ‘Somebody came to our school, and that’s what they told us.’ I said, ‘Oh.’ So I had to do a little explaining.”.Jeff Decontie is a married father of three in Ottawa who articled for Justice Department and now works in Indigenous services. He said western secularism causes the indigenous more friction with Christianity than traditional spirituality..“My dad’s community, and therefore mine, is Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg. It’s about two hours north of Ottawa. My mom’s from Kahnawake, and she would be a Mohawk Catholic…I was raised entirely in the city, just one of those urban Indigenous people from an Algonquin background,” Decontie explained..“Christianity is the big bad wolf now among some circles, but that sounds like the golden oldies. I think most youths wouldn’t even declare themselves traditional or Christian. They would say, ‘I’m nothing, I’m different, I don’t care.” Well, they are something. They would be secular, and they would be something of a utilitarian ‘Whatever makes you happy.’ That’s the dominant expression for Indigenous youth, just like other non-Indigenous youth.” Maria Lucas, who is a Black Métis lawyer specializing in Aboriginal law, shares a lineage with the Loyalists in Nova Scotia. She said it was harder for her to reconcile Christianity with her heritage, but looking deeper gave her inspiration..“I often think that people think it’s a contradiction to be Indigenous and Catholic. And I find that the more I discover, the more of a fit there seems to be actually,” Lucas said..“The cross is reconciliation; it demonstrates reconciliation within Christianity. It’s how we are reconciled back to the Father. But it also demonstrates, I think, that reconciliation is not an easy journey. It’s going to be very arduous, because the cross is painful, but there’s also a lot of beauty in taking up one’s cross and carrying it. And you’re not doing it alone. You can only do it with grace,” she explained.
