Rev. Kelly Sherman Conroy of Nativity Lutheran Church created this Indigenous Peoples Resources list for all ages.
Find books, curricula, prayer, music, and worship elements (including a full sermon), and community organizations and businesses grouped to help congregations take next steps in antiracism work, creation care, and addressing intergenerational mental health and well-being in the WaterThreads - Woven Together: Water, Community, Well-Being. Available online and via requested download for member congregations - who should email: ministrylab@unitedseminary.edu - for access.
Deb Haaland Confronts the History of the Federal Agency She Leads
As the first Native American Cabinet member, the Secretary of the Interior has made it part of her job to address the travesties of the past.
By Casey Cep
5 Indigenous Women Asserting the Modern Matriarchy
They’re reclaiming the tradition of female leadership and turning the old, white, male-dominated perspective of history on its head.
BY CHELSEY LUGER / Yes! Magazine
MAR 30, 2018
Image: A Sisterhood Is Sacred. Left to Right: April Chavez (Kewa), Talavai Denipah-Cook (Ohkay Owingeh/ Hopi), Jazmin Arquero (Cochiti/Zuni), Dina DeVore (Jemez/Kewa/Laguna), Alexis Wade (Laguna), Marquel Musgrave (Nanbe' Owingeh), and Kim Smith (Diné). Photo by Cara Romero
For Indigenous Peoples, Abortion Is a Religious Right
by Abaki Beck & Rosalyn Lapier; Yes! Magazine
Kelly Sherman-Conroy, Mato Wašté Winyan (Good Bear Woman), offers these words on her blog: "What are you doing to share our stories. Right the wrongs. What are you doing to not just speak up, but act?"
CANYON LAKE UMC WALKS WITH NATIVE AMERICAN FAMILIES
By: Doreen Gosmire, director of communications, Dakotas UMC
In A Time For Reckoning: North American Christianity and Indigenous Cultural Genocide, Mike Morrell offers a call to awareness, humility, repentance, and action; includes resource lists for reading/study; supporting, enjoying and learning from Indigenous artists; and specific actions for individuals, households, and congregations.
John Curl curated this list of Resources for Indigenous Peoples' Day.
Engage the whole congregation in learning the 'whys' of a Land Acknowledgement - and let the Littles lead. Written by Minnesota author Ashley Fairbanks (Anishinaabe, White Earth), This Land introduces the idea of appreciating one's place on the land by appreciating the land's history, inviting readers to wonder - and discover - who lived on the land where they live, before they lived here. It's beautiful and profound and encourages wonder and exploration to learn the truths of colonizer and settler history, current realities of land ownership, and the current lived realities of Indigenous communities, as it invites us all to appreciate the lands we inhabit.
Introduce the book and gain essential background and insight from Sam Stroozas' MPR interview with Ashley Fairbanks. Listen or read the transcript here.
As we are embraced by God's reconciling love in worship, we are equipped to carry that reconciling love into our relationships beyond the worship space. Worship equips us for the work of conciliation, but the liturgy itself needs to be decolonized if it is to truly honor Christian commitments to God and neighbor. This book explores the reformed liturgy in its pattern of Gathering, Word, Table, and Sending, searching it both for colonial vestiges, and spaces of new possibility. Unsettling Worship invites the reader into a conversation about reformed worship in a setting of ongoing colonization. Worship should both unsettle us, and equip us for the essential work of making things right with Indigenous neighbors.
Doing the Deeply Spiritual Work of Land Acknowledgment
Tracy Kugler, a member of St. Paul's UCC in St. Paul, MN
~includes a strong list of resources for congregational or personal learning
A Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgment was compiled in conversation with a group of Minnesota Indigenous leaders.
Native America has confronted apocalypse for more than four hundred years. In We Survived the End of the World, Choctaw elder Steven Charleston tells the stories of four Indigenous prophets who helped their people learn strategies for surviving catastrophe, using their lessons and wisdom as guidance for how we can face the uncertainty of the modern age.
Dive deeper with the discussion guide—perfect for book clubs or individual study.
Find books, curricula, prayer, music, and worship elements (including a full sermon), and community organizations and businesses grouped to help congregations take next steps in antiracism work, creation care, and addressing intergenerational mental health and well-being in the WaterThreads - Woven Together: Water, Community, Well-Being. Available online and via requested download for member congregations - who should email: ministrylab@unitedseminary.edu - for access.
Bam’idizowigamig Creator’s PlaceOpened in April, 2023,Bam’idizowigamig Creator’s Place is designed to be a place of work and welcome. A place where people can enjoy earning supplemental income, use and improve their skills and get support in creating their own business or obtaining full time employment elsewhere.
The Ojibwe word Bam’idizowigamig means “a place to support oneself”. Bam’idizowigamig Creator’s Place is located in the small reservation village of Pine Point, MN. Pine Point Village is one of the most poverty stricken areas in the United States. Its location means that until now, to be employed, a person had to have reliable transportation to travel almost 30 miles for work. That and many other barriers have made paid employment of any kind very difficult to obtain. Bam’idizowigamig Creator’s Place is doing something about that – and YOU can help!
Please browse the shop and know that every purchase provides a glimmer of hope to a village where hope is hard to find.
Waadookawaad Amikwag, (in English, “Those Who Help Beaver”), is a group of innovative Water Protectors who are making a difference! They are Indigenous Leaders, Professional Drone Pilots, and Certified Water Testers, Citizen Scientists, working in conjunction with environmental organizations and community members to protect clean water and manoomin. They are on the frontline gathering footage, data, and evidence of environmental damage and crimes. Their investigation leads to advocacy with state & federal agencies about the impacts Pipeline 3 is having on wetlands and waterways.
Sign up for the newsletter here. Become a community scientist and join the effort to help beaver!!
PBS Learning Media documentary on Indigenous boarding schools is here (https://tpt.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/arct.socst.ush.wounded12aschoolsa/taken-from-their-families-native-american-boarding-schools/)
Renewable Energy Projects Power Up in Tribal Nations
TED MCDERMOTT
At White Earth Tribal and Community College, in Mahnomen, a paid solar-worker certification program is preparing students of all ages to install solar arrays. Across the reservation in Osage, 8th Fire Solar is constructing solar thermal panels—basically a sun-powered furnace system—that help people cut emissions and lower winter heating bills.
Searching for the Unmarked Graves of Indigenous Children
By Nilo Tabrizy, Ed Ou and Caroline Kim•October 20, 2021
The Minnesota Council of Churches Healing Minnesota Stories provide group Sacred Sites Tour to Explore Indigenous Experience in Minnesota. These tours are designed to "create understanding and healing between Native American and non-Native people, particularly those in various faith communities".
Tours are led by Rev. Jim Bear Jacobs (Mohican) and Bob Klanderud (Dakota). The tours offer an opportunity to learn about Minnesota history from a Native perspective through story-telling and experiencing the sites in silence / meditation / reflection.
KAIROS Blanket Exercise is a 2 to 3-hour interactive and experiential teaching workshop developed in collaboration with Indigenous Elders, Knowledge Keepers and educators that explores the historic and contemporary relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the land we now know as Canada and the Northern US.
Visit the Wakan Tipi Center, part of the Lower Phalen Creek Project.
