In 1777, Cherokee statesman Kaiyahtehee, also known as “Old Tassel,” arrived at Fort Henry near the Long Island in the Holston River to negotiate a treaty with commissioners from the state of North Carolina. The treaty would give America land east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, much of which is now Eastern Tennessee.
However, as was often the case, the state representatives arrived demanding a greater share of land than was originally agreed upon. “It is not a little surprising that when we enter into treaties with our brothers, the whites, their whole cry is, ‘More land’,” said Old Tassel.
The Cherokee wanted peace and wanted to keep the Long Island itself, which was a sacred council and treaty site as well as a center for trade. Old Tassel reasoned there was more than enough land for both sides to prosper.
“The great God of Nature has placed us in different situations. It is true, he has endowed you with many superior advantages; but he has not created us to be your slaves: We are a separate people! He has given each our lands, under distinct considerations and circumstances; he has stocked yours with the cow, ours with the buffalo; yours with the hog, ours with the bear; yours with the sheep, ours with the deer,” he said.
The advantage the white men had over the Cherokee, Old Tassel continued, was that their animals were domesticated while the Cherokees’ were wild. In his view, those demanding more land in reality required less because they had no need to hunt.
Land mindset
Land as property is not part of the indigenous mindset. Cherokee, like Kaiyahtehee and other Native Americans, see themselves as an extension of the land. For the colonizers on the other side of the treaty table, not only was land considered property, they also believed they had a God-given right to claim land in North America. Treaties signed with peoples they deemed inferior if not sub-human were not going to stand in their way.
This concept came to be known as the Doctrine of Discovery, and it provided religious, political and legal justification for colonialism and the seizure of any land inhabited by non-Christians.
The Doctrine of Discovery has its roots in a few early Renaissance papal decrees blessing the burgeoning slave trade in Africa and European exploration of the Americas. Because both enterprises required the exploitation and subjugation of native people to succeed, inherent in the decrees was the belief that mistreatment of indigenous people was acceptable because they were not Christians.
Protestants may not have cared much for the pope’s blessing, but they happily embraced a worldview that justified the confiscation of indigenous lands — by force if necessary.
Massachusetts Bay Colony governor and Puritan leader John Winthrop believed any land without a native settlement on it was free for the taking. When the Pequot Nation disagreed, Winthrop approved the massacre of 700 members of the tribe, including men, women and children. He then sold the surviving Pequot into slavery and declared a “public day of thanksgiving” for the colony.
Manifest destiny
It was a short leap from the Doctrine of Discovery to the belief that it was America’s manifest destiny to expand westward to the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. government had no qualms about swindling or killing indigenous people as part of this continued expansion.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall declared the “principle of discovery gave European nations absolute right to native lands.” Marshall based his 19th century legal decision on the Pope’s 15th century permission to conquer and Christianize indigenous people. Later, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg used the same argument in a 2005 ruling against the Oneida Nation.
In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, which divided tribal land into allotments. By breaking up native reservations, the government hoped to break up indigenous tribes. Native Americans who once held tribal land in common were now forced to own it individually, which left them vulnerable to exploitation at the hands of white businessmen.
At the same time, the government sold “surplus” reservation land to white farmers who stripped native land of its natural resources without compensating the tribes. The Cherokee, who were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands, lost 98% of their reservation land in Oklahoma because of the Dawes Act.
“Churches also bought up land vacated by the Cherokee and other tribes.”
Farmers and businessmen weren’t the only ones who benefited. Churches also bought up land vacated by the Cherokee and other tribes. In 1819, the Civilization Fund Act provided money (and sometimes land) to Christian organizations willing to establish boarding schools to “civilize” and separate native children from their communities. Those in charge of the Bureau of Indian Affairs reasoned that assimilated native children would not return to the reservation, forcing tribes to forfeit their land. Such schools continued to operate with governmental support into the 1960s.
Jodi Spargur
According to Jodi Spargur, who helps congregations heal their relationships with indigenous people, “If the intention of the colonial project in Canada and the U.S. was to harness the power of the church to justify the theft of land, then does the journey toward healing and right relations not necessitate addressing the issue of land?”
Steps toward restitution
The Catholic Church took a step toward justice in March when Pope Francis responded to appeals from indigenous people and repudiated the 400-year-old Doctrine of Discovery, saying the decrees behind it “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples.”
Many mainline Protestant denominations as well as the World Council of Churches also have denounced the doctrine.
While these statements are important, “it does not change the fact that the church’s views gave permission to colonizers to take native lands and assimilate native peoples,” said National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition CEO Deb Parker (Tulalip Nation).
One way to bring awareness to past abuse by Christian colonizers is through land acknowledgement statements. Originating in Australia, and popular in Canada following the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, land acknowledgement statements are often read at the beginning of public events or posted on organizations’ websites. Canadian school children read them as part of the morning announcements at the start of each school day.
In a few sentences, these statements identify the original indigenous inhabitants of land where the event, school or business is located and sometimes the broken treaty associated with that land. Churches in Canada and the U.S. are adopting their own acknowledgement statements.
“It’s important for us to name these places where we are and our relationship to them because it’s one of the ways we make visible the narratives that have distorted and erased history (and) prevented us from understanding and seeking justice and healing and wholeness because we haven’t understood the harms,” Spargur said.
Practice of confession
For churches, land acknowledgement statements correct the corrupt theology of the Doctrine of Discovery. Through them, congregations stand in solidarity with native tribes and with Jesus Christ, who gave up his power and privilege to stand with the marginalized of humanity.
Ingrid Rasmussen
Ingrid Rassmussen, lead pastor of Minneapolis’ Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, sees land acknowledgements as part of the Christian practice of confession.
“We confess wrongdoing and past injustices. A land acknowledgment allows us to confess the church’s active and complicit participation in harm done against native peoples,” she said.
Virginia Theological Seminary and Spargur’s organization, Red Clover, provide information to help churches construct effective acknowledgement statements. Their interactive map is useful for determining the land’s rightful occupants and any treaties associated with it.
To be effective, however, land acknowledgement statements must be sincere and lead to actions that address the illegal seizure of land and the harm done to the land’s original inhabitants and their descendants. Some churches are creating educational resources on the history of their land and its people.
St. John United Methodist Church in Bridgeton, N.J., included information about the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape and other Native American cultures in its VBS curriculum. In 2016, the United Methodist denomination held a ceremony honoring the descendants of those from the Arapaho and Cheyenne Nations murdered by troops led by Methodist minister Col. John Milton Chivington.
Reparations of land
However, for Native American tribes who see themselves as part of the land, true reparations must be connected to the land. As Old Tassel told the white settlers, in words similar to Christ’s own: “We wish to be at peace with you and to do as we would be done by.”
If churches or denominations had been the ones whose land was unjustly taken, they would want that land returned. Therefore, it isn’t unreasonable for indigenous people to desire the same.
The Land Back movement, organized by Native American activists, believes the most important aspect of the rematriation of land is the building of cooperative relationships that allow native input into decisions about the land free of paternalism or assimilation.
“Let’s keep in mind this is a journey of repairing relationships, that’s what reparations means, ‘repairing,’ which must happen in dialogue and should always be directed by those most impacted by the harms,” Spargur said.
“To repent of their mistreatment of native peoples, the Methodist church’s Oregon-Idaho Conference returned a camp in Oregon to the Nez Perce.”
To repent of their mistreatment of native peoples, the Methodist church’s Oregon-Idaho Conference returned a camp in Oregon to the Nez Perce. Their General Board of Global Ministries returned 3 acres in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, to the Wyandotte Nation.
In 1880, the U.S. government gave the Jesuits more than 500 acres in South Dakota, which they recently returned to the Rosebud Sioux.
Klukwan Presbyterian Church in Alaska was built by native people on native land with materials paddled to the building site via canoe in 1903. Yet, the Alaska natives who live in Klukwan never owned the church or its land until recently when it was given to them by Presbyterian leaders in Juneau. Now the community has installed a new pastor and is beginning repairs to the manse.
Other ideas
There are ways to address the seizure of indigenous land that do not require the land’s current occupants to leave.
St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church in Madison, Wis., sits on the land of the Ho-Chunk Nation, who were killed or forced out of Wisconsin in the Blackhawk War of 1832. In 2022, the church voted to add a 1% “voluntary tax” of their total expenses, approximately $3,000, to their annual budget as a way to put “their money where their mouth is” with regard to being better allies to Native Americans.
“Our ability to gather and worship on this land came at great cost to the Ho-Chunk people,” said Miranda Hassett, rector at St. Dunstan’s.
The Indian Land Tenure Foundation gives grants to native tribes to repurchase reservation land lost as a result of the Dawes Act and helps tribes create the natural resource management plans required when buying land owned by federal, state and local governments. So far, the organization has returned 155,000 acres, worth $270 million, to Native American tribes. Some of this land has spiritual significance for indigenous people or is part of historic hunting and fishing grounds.
After Indian Land Tenure Foundation President Cris Stainbrook spoke at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church about native land, Rasmussen surprised him with a check for $250,000, explaining: “Because our church benefited from the land theft, we recognize our responsibility to advocate for treaty rights, tribal sovereignty and movements to return land back into indigenous hands. The significance of this sacred ground — as well as its painful history — compels us as a congregation to engage in reparative justice in words and deeds and dollars.”
Holy Trinity’s donation inspired the Beyond Land Acknowledgement Fund, which provides a way for organizations and individuals to turn their words into action.
Other ideas include sharing land with a local tribe and inviting them into the management process, working to grow and harvest certain plants used in traditional medicine, or uniting with tribes in advocacy issues related to land use and nature.
In Luke’s Gospel, Zacchaeus is so inspired by the grace and mercy shown to him by Jesus, he vows to give half his possessions to the poor and to repay four times over what he had stolen as a result of his position as chief tax collector. In response, Jesus declares, “Salvation has come to this house.”
If churches repaid what was taken from Native Americans, what salvation, what new life might they find?