Bring Back the Buffalo (IV): Acknowledging the Land
Since returning from our recent visit to Saskatchewan to celebrate the release of the Pelican Lake buffalo herd, a project of Loko Koa’s Bring Back the Buffalo initiative, I’ve been thinking very deeply about the practice of reading Land Acknowledgements at public gatherings. Many of my thoughts are still tentative and somewhat ambivalent, but they’re at least formed clearly enough to share some of them in the context of a blog post like this.
On the one hand, I’ve heard many critiques of the use of land acknowledgements: that they don’t accomplish anything tangible; that we (i.e. settlers like me) use them simply to make ourselves feel better, instead of taking concrete action; that they’re usually little more than lip-service and tokenism and often disguise hypocrisy and racist attitudes.
This bit from the Baroness Von Sketch show riffs playfully on that particular line of critique.
I’ve heard more pointed critiques than these, though: that they paint a historically inaccurate picture of the First Nations' territorial claims and inter-tribal relationships, portraying these things as entirely idyllic and peaceful when historically the situation was far more complicated than most land acknowledgments want to admit; that they only deepen the guilt and shame that white people in Canada already feel about the history of our dealings with the First Nations of this land, without pointing to any helpful path forward; that all that happened a long time ago, and it’s not like we can return things to the way they were.
I hope it’s clear that in sharing these critiques, I don’t agree with them. I have, in fact, pushed back against many of them.
Most recently, in a discussion about land acknowledgements, where some of the aforementioned criticisms were made of the practice, I suggested that a land acknowledgement is not so much for the sake of the Indigenous people they refer to. It is, rather, for the sake of the settlers who are making them. They are there to remind settlers of the simple, historical truth, that the reason we are “using the land” that we use is because we made treaties with the peoples who were using it before any settlers arrived, and it’s on the basis of those treaties that we’re here. In that sense, Land Acknowledgements might better be thought of as “Treaty Acknowledgements.” When we think about it in these terms, a Land Acknowledgement reminds settlers of the responsibilities and commitments that were part of the treaties we made, and implicitly asks settlers to ask themselves whether we are living faithfully by those commitments.
I realize this is not a perfect answer. I believe that many of the treaties that Canada made with the First Nations of this land were made in bad faith. Many have not been kept. Many have been hotly contested.
My understanding is that the Williams Treaties, for example, which cover the land of the Durham Region of Ontario where I currently live, was a highly controversial series of agreements. Signed in 1923, the Williams Treaties abolished Indigenous hunting and fishing rights in the region, rights that had been guaranteed under previous treaties. Over the subsequent decades, many Williams Treaties First Nations bands disputed these treaties in a series of contentious legal battles. In 2018 the governments of both Ontario and Canada finally settled with the Williams Treaties First Nations, agreeing to pay $1.1 billion dollars for surrendered lands. As part of the settlement, the government issues an apology which said, in part, “We are sorry [that] continued injustices provided insufficient compensation and inadequate reserve lands [and] failed to recognize and protect your treaty rights.” (While this was a significant step, the payout amounted to approximately $85/acre for the land covered by the treaties, when the value of the real estate at the time of the settlement was somewhere north of $10,000/acre.)
So appealing to treaties is not, on its own, enough to answer all the problems people may have with land acknowledgements (although it is possible that the moral impetus to finally settle a dispute like the Williams Treaties was shored up, at least in part, by the practice of regularly reminding settlers of their treaty obligations, through the consistent use of land acknowledgements).
Nevertheless, I want to be clear that I am very much in favor of an intentionally used land acknowledgement, provided it is connected to a broader commitment to and practice of real, concrete action towards reconciliation and right relationship.
What I’m thinking about today, though, as I continue to reflect on the role of land acknowledgements from a Christian perspective, is the theological basis for the practice.
As modern, Western, post-enlightenment, capitalist Canadians, we are deeply conditioned to think about the “land” in terms of “ownership.” This is partly why something like a land acknowledgment rubs some settlers the wrong way. The thinking runs something like this: “The land was ‘theirs’ once, but it’s ‘ours’ now, and acknowledging that must imply that we don’t have a ‘right to it,’ and we need to ‘give it back.’” I doubt many settlers would put it that crassly, but that is certainly the subtext of some critiques of land acknowledgements that I’ve heard.
From a Christian perspective, though, I think this is a profoundly unbiblical way of looking at it. One of the most fundamental axioms of the Faith—the first statement of the Creed, in fact—is that we believe in God, the “Father Almighty,” who is the maker of heaven and earth. As the creator of all that is, God is also the “owner” of all that is (to whatever extent you can describe his entirely generous and loving relationship with the universe in terms of “ownership”). The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, is how the Psalmist put it—the earth and everything in it, because (why?) He (and not we ourselves) founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.
A Christian with a full-orbed, biblical theology of creation would inevitably embrace, with it, a full-orbed, biblical theology of stewardship. When God made human beings in the Divine Image, it was for the express purpose of stewarding God’s creation (to “serve” the earth and “govern it” wisely.
As the Creator’s Stewards then, all Christians, settler and indigenous alike, must recognize that (1) none of us “own” the land in the modern, Western, capitalistic sense of the word, and that (2) we are deeply obligated to live in right relationship with all the rest of God’s children who also inhabit the land, sharing it generously and handling it with transparent integrity. This is why the Old Testament Law enjoins God’s people to practice radical hospitality to the stranger in the land—because it’s not theirs, it belongs to Creator God, and that’s how he’d use it. It also explains the deepest reason for the exile that forms the central heartache of the Old Testament story. The reason God’s People were exiled from the land is because they had forgotten their responsibility to use it as Creator’s stewards, and were living in it as though it belonged to them (read the entire chapter of Leviticus 26 for more).
Christians who appreciated all the implications of the Bible’s opening verses would see a land acknowledgement—at least one that was carefully written and intentionally used—as a profound act of worship, reminding them that everything they feel they “owned” (in the capitalistic sense of the word) was really the possession (for lack of a more divine word) of Creator God. And they would participate in land acknowledgements with a renewed desire to live as God’s stewards of the Creation in the fullest sense of that word, pursuing justice for those who have been exploited by our misuse of God’s green earth, practicing radical generosity towards those with whom they share it, and taking up the responsibility to handle the land with gentleness, integrity and, above all, right relationship with others.
Bring Back the Buffalo (III): Sweating it Out in Prayer
One of the most moving and impactful experiences I had on my recent cultural encounter at the Pelican Lake First Nations Reserve in Northern Saskatchewan was when our hosts invited us to participate in a traditional sweat lodge.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, our church has been exploring over the last few years what it really looks like to live in reconciliation with our Indigenous neighbors, and as part of this journey, we participated in a Loko Koa “Bring Back the Buffalo” development project, helping to sponsor a herd of buffalo which was gifted to the community of Pelican Lake. This June, I was part of a 6-person delegation that went to visit the project and meet some of the leaders at Pelican Lake.
We had many significant moments on this trip, but, again, the one I’m still reflecting on deeply, some three months later, was the traditional Indigenous sweat lodge we had the privilege of participating in.
If you’ve never seen one before, a sweat lodge is an Indigenous practice focused on healing and prayer. Essentially, it’s a hand-built hut made of tree boughs, tarps, and blankets, which is heated with rocks from a huge bonfire. When everyone’s inside, they close the entrance so it becomes pitch dark, and then fill the space with steam by pouring water over the rocks, and participants sing, chant, and pray to Creator while they’re sweating it out there in the dark.
I want to stress, very respectfully, how deeply moved and profoundly impacted I was by this experience. For my part, while I was praying in the darkness of the lodge, I found the Creator directing my thoughts to a cousin of mine who I grew up with, who was Cree and was adopted into our family, whom I lost touch with in my early adulthood, only to discover, much later, that he had died, tragically, in an accident related to addictions that he had been fighting for many years. I found myself praying over his story, and coming to understand my own part in it, in a way I had never been able to before, and as I did, I felt a huge lump of guilt and regret rise in me and flow from me, like a wound when it’s been lanced. From that point, I began to pray over my role in the painful story of Canada’s mistreatment of the First Nations of this land, with a yearning I’d never really felt before, and an almost crushing weight of humility pressing down on me.
So I am only thankful to have been invited into the sacred space of that sweat lodge.
But, as a Christian pastor in a church tradition that traces its roots through the evangelical sub-culture of Christendom to the Holiness movement and the Wesleyan theological tradition, I have to admit that my theological radar started pinging faintly when we learned that we were going to do a sweat lodge. I say this with a bit of chagrin, but also in the interest of full disclosure. I am too deeply shaped, I think, by my own theological tradition (which has been, for the most part, pretty conservative), not at least to wonder if a “good Christian” should do a sweat. Is the creator they’re praying to in that lodge, I wondered, the same as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? And if it’s not, is it right for me to join in? Will the distinctions between creator and creation be clear enough in the darkness that I can be sure I’m worshiping the former and not the later? Will it matter?
It’s possible you may interpret the fact that I wrestled with these doubts as evidence of the fact that I’m more bigoted and self-righteous than I care to admit, and probably didn’t really deserve to be in the sweat lodge in the first place; or it’s possible you yourself were wondering similar things when you learned at the top of this post, that I, as a Christian pastor, joined in a sweat lodge of all things.
In either case, let me share very briefly how I arrived at the conclusion that not only would it be okay for me to go, but it would, actually be wrong of me not to. Because there were actually three biblical themes that sort of wove together to form my theological rationale for joining the sweat.
First, I thought of the multiple references in the scripture to the fact that the whole creation is alive and awake to the goodness of its creator—descriptions of hills rejoicing and trees clapping their hands, for instance. These led me to believe that if I had an opportunity to embrace that truth more deeply, by participating in an activity that was so clearly open to the spiritual dimension of the Creator’s world, I would benefit greatly from making the most of it. I believed I was on to something when, in the midst of the chanting and drumming during one round of the sweat, we could hear, distinctly over it all, the grunting and snorting of the buffalo herd, just outside, which had become aware of our presence and come over to investigate. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more aware of my “nephesh kinship” with the rest of the creation than I did in that moment.
The next theological theme was the idea we see in the Book of Acts, in Paul’s writings, and occasionally in the Book of Revelation, that the Lord invites us to bring to him all kinds of cultural expressions of worship and spirituality to honor him and celebrate him, and that he is far more interested in redeeming human culture than he is in condemning it entirely out of hand. Could Christ be present in the darkness of a sweat lodge, I asked myself (very rhetorically—of course he could). And if he was, could he redeem the experience, If it was offered in faith for his glory?
The final theme had to do with my growing conviction that Paul meant far more than we understand when he said that we “look through a glass, darkly” when it comes to the things of God. What I mean is that modern, conservative, conceptually-oriented evangelical believers like I have always been tend to be pretty confident in their ability to “see all of God” in their particular approach to Faith, and to “describe all of God” in their neat-and-tidy theological systems. We don’t really believe we see things in a glass darkly, when it comes to our theology; we’re far more likely to think we’ve got everything tied up and mapped out.
Evangelicals like to relate the moment in Acts 17 when Paul came to Athens intent on proclaiming the “unknown God” to the ignorant and unenlightened Athenians. Certainly, that is, in part, what he was doing. But the more I reflect on that story, in light of my increasing understanding and vision of who God is, the more I believe that we all of us, in some way or another, worship an “unknown God.” At least, I am increasingly convinced that none of us will ever fully have “the corner” on “the whole picture” of who God is and what he’s up to in the world. However tidy our theological systems may be, there will always be an infinite remainder of truths about God’s glory we haven’t yet glimpsed or described.
When I entered the lodge, I was opening myself to encounter Creator in a way I had never encountered Creator before. As I Christian, of course, I believe very firmly that this Creator has revealed himself to us in the person (and especially through the cross) of Jesus Christ. But that knowledge doesn’t make him any less the Creator—the creator of stones and sweetgrass and fire and fir boughs, of buffalo herds and prairie skies—all the things that were so fully present to us in the heat of that sweat lodge, more fully present than I had ever imagined they might be. And in encountering Creator in this unique and particular way, I was glimpsing a side of the “unknown God” I’d never seen before, a glimpse that would forever change, by deepening it and broadening it, the truth of what I mean when I recite the Apostle’s Creed: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth.
And I am convinced that I emerged from the darkness with a slightly fuller understanding of who God is than I’d had before; and more importantly, with a bit more awareness of how fully the Creator really knows me. He sees me, after all, just as clearly when I’m praying in the sweaty ordeal of an Indigenous sweat lodge up in Northern Saskatchewan, as he does when I’m kneeling on the comfy prayer rails in the air-conditioned sanctuary of my church here at home.
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