Congregational Life: Social Justice: Indigenous Peoples

Video presentation, “Inconvenient Truth 2" 

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 Place

Opened 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.

INDEPENDENT LENS: Home from School: The Children of Carlisle

By Jennifer Robinson / Web Producer

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.

Upcoming Tour Dates

 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.

• Share the introductory video.
• Discuss environmental racism
• Learn about this land's sacred and cultural significance for the Dakota people
• Engage in the restoration of prairie, language and traditions
• Enjoy a staff-guided hike