Presbyterians gather online to celebrate Native American Day

LOUISVILLE — During Wednesday’s Chapel Service, Ruling Elder Elona Street-Stewart and the Rev. Irv Porter joined to help Presbyterians honor Native American Day, which is traditionally celebrated during the week of the fall equinox.

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The service included recordings of the hymns “How Great Thou Art” sung in the Choctaw language, and “Mni Wiconi,” which means “Water is Life,” a Dakota hymn.

Street-Stewart, a member of the Delaware Nanticoke Tribe, is the executive of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies and served as Co-Moderator of the 224^th General Assembly (2020). She called the fall equinox “harvest time for many Native American tribes. For centuries, it has been a time of celebration and preparation for the winter.”

She noted that many people are surprised to learn that the first Bible off the presses in North America, the Eliot Indian Bible published in 1663, was in Natick, also known as Wampanoag, the language of Algonquian people of the present-day state of Massachusetts.

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At around 1759, Samson Occom, a Presbyterian, became one of the first ordained Chistian Indian ministers. The Rev. Azariah Horton was a Presbyterian Anglo-American missionary who conducted a 10-year mission (1741-1751) to the Montauketts and Shinnecocks of Long Island in New York before being succeeded by Occom in 1750. “We have a long history of Presbyterians being recognized for their ordinations,” Street-Stewart said.

Today, the PC(USA)’s Native American congregations and chapels range from Long Island, New York to Barrow, Alaska. They’re found in 20 presbyteries in seven synods. “Your prayers in support of these congregations, leaders and communities would be very much appreciated, and are needed,” Street-Stewart said.

Porter, the associate for Native American Intercultural Congregational Support in the Interim Unified Agency, is descended from three Native American tribes: Pima, T’hono O’odham and Nez Perce. He offered a gathering prayer based on Psalm 85 and used Creation texts found in Genesis 1:1-2 and John 1:1-5 as the basis for his meditation.

“The natural world is something Native American people understand very well, and always have,” Porter said. “The land the Creator blessed us with is the provider of life and a treasure at all times.”

In God’s son, “We have a witness to this Creation, Jesus Christ, who was there in the beginning,” Porter said.

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“Genesis and John both start in the beginning,” Porter pointed out. Genesis works downward from that point, but “John works upward, telling us what preceded it,” he said. “It lies beyond time.”

The beauty of the mountain dew in the deserts of southwest Arizona, the home of Porter’s father, “is more of God’s handiwork. It is always on display,” he said. The forests of northern Idaho, his mother’s home, “are seen as a resource by some people, but to the Nez Perce, it has been home for generations.”

“Native Americans are one with the land, the lands they own and once owned,” Porter said. “They revere the land created by God.”

For many years, Native American Presbyterians have attended to the camp meeting tradition. “Worshiping in open air and under tents gives us the closeness to nature we seem to have lost,” Porter said. “God knows our life. God knows where we understand God best — from a cathedral in Europe, the nicest churches in our own country, or in the forest, where our ancestors have worshiped the Creator for centuries.”

God continues to be at work with those 98 PC(USA) congregations, Porter said.

“We worship God in our own way, and we worship God the best way we can,” he said. “We may not have large congregations or Sunday schools or programs that many other churches have, but we have each other, and we have our places of worship. All in all, God provides, and we are God’s people.”

“God has blessed our people with language that some have tried to silence, such as in boarding schools. But we endure. Native Americans are resilient and adaptive,” Porter said. “We are grateful the PC(USA) has given us days to celebrate the gifts that Native Americans present. I thank you for that this morning.”

Porter led the people gathered online in saying a translation of the Lord’s Prayer made by his great grandmother, Hattie Enos of the Nez Perce tribe:

“O Great Spirit, Creator of the universe, you are the Shepherd Chief in the most high place, whose home is everywhere, even beyond the stars and the moon. Whatever you want done, let it also be done everywhere. Give us your gift of bread day by day. Forgive us our wrongs as we forgive those who wrong us. Take us away from wrong things. Free us from all evil. For everything belongs to you. Let your power and glory shine forever. Amen.”