This is my last post on Manitoulin Island, one of my favorite places to visit.  A key reason I enjoy visits there is the interaction I have at times with descendants of the island’s first inhabitants, the native Canadian people on the Wikmemikong First Nations Reserve where my brother, Dick, and sister-in-law, Shirley, founded and carried on the DayStar Native Outreach ministry.  Dick has been with the Lord now for almost 15 years.  Shirley continued the ministry after Dick died and eventually married Don Hamilton, who also became a vital part of the work.  Don too has now gone to be with his Lord.

Since the time I could first read, I mentally devoured all the books in our school library on Native North Americans, and I eventually found myself making replicas of Indian war clubs, peace pipes, dance fans and sticks, and various other homemade artifacts.  In the last twenty years or so, I have also studied aspects of indigenous spirituality among native tribes.  This has somewhat paralleled my involvement in creation care activities and my coming to understand better the biblical theology of nature.  Studying the two aspects of “spirituality” together, I discovered a number of bridges between the two expressions of faith.

Native spirituality differs greatly from the biblical worldview in that the former was never written down in formalized creeds.  Whereas Christianity virtually began with written creeds and statements of faith (John 1 and Colossians 1 containing significant biblical creeds) indigenous North American tribes passed on their beliefs orally.  For that reason their beliefs can only be generalized from their stories.  Nonetheless, it seems to me that the following aspects of the worldview common in traditional indigenous cultures can provide a solid bridge to the biblical worldview—plus enlighten Christians about aspects of truth that modernism and Enlightenment thinking seem to have forgotten or ignored:

1.   Belief in God (the Great Spirit) and that He is the creator, the source of life, the source of  intelligence, and sovereign over the affairs of people

2.   Belief that it is important to communicate with the Creator through prayer and other regular practices

3.   Belief that worship of the Creator is essential to a good life—worship expressed ceremonially on a regular basis

4.   Belief that the Creator wants His people to live together in unity in caring communities

5.   Belief that it is important to show thankfulness to the Creator on a regular basis

6.   Belief in spiritual warfare

7.   Belief that people ought to be content with enough and always be ready to share

8.   Belief that technology will never bring about true happiness and satisfaction in life

9.   Belief that material possessions do not satisfy the human spirit

10. Belief that the earth is a gift from the Creator to be used with care and compassion

11. Belief that animals have souls (though different from human souls) and that all created things respond in their own nature to their Creator

Today there’s a major movement among Native North Americans to “recover” their spiritual roots.  The problem, however, is that many of the spiritual traditions of the past have been lost over the past two centuries.  It’s not likely that any contemporary interpretation of indigenous religious beliefs is the same as it was two hundred years ago—because there is no written record to which it can be compared.  Further, many of the traditions have been altered by the inclusion of New Age, animistic, wiccan, and Eastern philosophical ideas.  As a result many so-called Native religions are filled now filled with monistic, pantheistic, and human deifying concepts—Satan’s old lies in new clothes.  Much of what was compatible with Christianity in the old traditions has been recently adulterated by the forces of darkness.

It’s important to remember also that only a minority of Native North Americans today actually have a handle on their own religious traditions, and that these traditions vary greatly one from another—even more than church denominations do.  Sometimes these so-called traditions are little more than a self-chosen collection of spiritual elements a specific individual happens to like. And in that, indigenous people groups are again following the bad example set by descendants of American colonists.

It’s a great but difficult work that DayStar Native Outreach is involved in.  If you think about it, perhaps even as you read this, remember Shirley Hamilton in prayer as she continues her work of loving these First Nations’ people to Christ.

See you outdoors!

Dean