Indigenous peoples day 24

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, Diocese of the Rio Grande. This is Michael Hunn, your bishop, and This video is an invitation for us, knowing that our diocese Our Episcopal church in New Mexico and far west Texas is still predominantly Anglo, yet we do have a number of indigenous Episcopalians in the diocese. 3 00:00:20,569.999 --> 00:00:26,360 And also, of course, we have a very close and longstanding relationship with the diocese of Navajo land.

But for this indigenous people's day 2024, I wanted to offer.

.999 The Episcopal Diocese, a way of thinking about and celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day by taking action and getting to know the Indigenous history and cultures where you live. Because I grew up in this part of the world in northern New Mexico, I am spending time getting to know the Indigenous peoples around Corrales, New Mexico.

.999 The first book I want to share with you is Pueblo Peoples on the Pajarito. Plateau.

.998 This is an archaeological history that starts in Chaco Canyon and traces the history of the indigenous peoples who eventually settled in, Jemez Pueblo, Bandelier, and the language groupings that ended up in Cochiti and Sandia, etc. 10 00:01:17,64.999 --> 00:01:34,44.999 This is a wonderful history of the Pueblo peoples of the Pajarito Plateau from an archeological perspective, which is particularly close to my heart because as you may know, when I was growing up, my mother was an archeologist and worked out of the history center in Los Alamos. 11 00:01:34,419.999 --> 00:01:39,19.999 cataloging Indigenous rock art in the canyons around the Pajarito Plateau. 12 00:01:39,69.999 --> 00:01:41,479.999 I wanted, as a grown up, to learn more about it. 13 00:01:41,689.999 --> 00:01:43,619.999 I recommend this book highly. 14 00:01:43,889.999 --> 00:01:44,459.999 David E. 15 00:01:44,459.999 --> 00:01:49,349.999 Stewart, Pueblo Peoples on the Pajarito Plateau and Archaeological History. 16 00:01:52,449.999 --> 00:01:58,559.999 This book is called Nee Hemish, the story of Jemez or Jemez Pueblo. 17 00:02:00,319.999 --> 00:02:03,919.999 The Jemez Pueblo is one of my favorite places on earth. 18 00:02:04,149.999 --> 00:02:10,959.999 Route 4, which climbs up to the Jemez Mountains, past the Jemez Pueblo, is my favorite road in the world. 19 00:02:10,959.999 --> 00:02:12,859.999 I love to ride my bike on it. 20 00:02:13,159.999 --> 00:02:15,939.999 Meg and I hike in the Jemez Mountains. 21 00:02:16,169.999 --> 00:02:18,164.899 It is an absolutely beautiful, beautiful place. 22 00:02:18,314.999 --> 00:02:19,274.999 part of the world. 23 00:02:19,304.999 --> 00:02:23,54.999 I wanted to get to know the peoples who have lived there for hundreds of years. 24 00:02:23,304.999 --> 00:02:32,954.999 And, uh, they are the people who started in Chaco Canyon back centuries ago, but have also been in the Jemez River Valley for a long time. 25 00:02:33,174.998 --> 00:02:40,629.899 Joe Sando writes a number of fabulous books that will help you get to know Puebloan culture, the history of Pueblo. 26 00:02:40,699.999 --> 00:02:51,89.999 The Anglo interaction, the colonial interaction, and particularly Roman Catholic and Presbyterian interactions with the Jemez peoples in Jemez Pueblo. 27 00:02:51,419.999 --> 00:03:04,209.998 Part of the reason I want to get to know the Jemez people is I recommend that wherever you live, you get to know the Indigenous peoples who are in your area and have been for hundreds of years before colonialism even happened. 28 00:03:04,389.998 --> 00:03:07,89.999 So get to know the folks that are near you. 29 00:03:07,374.999 --> 00:03:08,774.999 That's part of what I'm doing here. 30 00:03:10,324.999 --> 00:03:17,244.999 We have a close relationship in the diocese with the Diné people, the Navajo people in the Diocese of Navajoland. 31 00:03:17,274.999 --> 00:03:23,814.999 And this book by Jim Christoffik, Reservation Restless, is his second volume. 32 00:03:24,134.999 --> 00:03:29,449.999 Jim Christoffik is also the author of Navajos wear Nikes, which is a great one. 33 00:03:29,689.999 --> 00:03:31,699.999 This is sort of the second volume about it. 34 00:03:31,789.999 --> 00:03:38,679.999 It is an exploration for Jim Kristoffik, who is Diné, and it's, he is also a park ranger. 35 00:03:38,879.999 --> 00:03:52,464.999 It talks about his growing up on the reservation and exploring the conflicted cultural identities and the challenging impact of Anglo culture with respect to Navajo culture. 36 00:03:52,794.999 --> 00:03:55,724.999 It's, it's beautifully written and it's absolutely eye opening. 37 00:03:55,724.999 --> 00:04:02,434.998 So if you haven't read anything by Jim Kristoff, I highly recommend Reservation Restless or Navajos Wear Nikes. 38 00:04:05,184.999 --> 00:04:13,794.999 Speaking of the Diné, I want to make sure everyone in the Diocese of Rio Grande knows about this volume, Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period. 39 00:04:14,494.999 --> 00:04:22,784.999 The Long Walk is one of the most, um, tragic historical moments in our diocese and the land here. 40 00:04:23,834.998 --> 00:04:45,4.999 The Long Walk, of course, is the story of how the United States government, as part of its manifest destiny, pushed westward, rounded up the Navajo people, and and then force marched the Diné across the Diocese of the Rio Grande from the Arizona border, um, up roughly the I 40 corridor over to Fort Sumner. 41 00:04:45,74.999 --> 00:04:55,854.999 The long walk came right through many of the cities and towns where we now have churches, and this is a collection of stories from the Diné. 42 00:04:56,464.999 --> 00:05:06,224.999 Perspective that have been handed down generation by generation to hear what it was like to be force marched and all the people who died and the tragedies that took place. 43 00:05:06,874.998 --> 00:05:11,944.999 This is a heartbreaking and painful book to read, but also eye opening. 44 00:05:11,954.998 --> 00:05:20,9.999 If you haven't been to Fort Sumner, Where there is a memorial to those who died on the long walk and those who suffered at Fort Sumner. 45 00:05:20,19.999 --> 00:05:26,269.999 Once they were basically held in a concentration camp there and many starved to death while they were there in Fort Sumner. 46 00:05:26,270.099 --> 00:05:30,789.9985 There's a wonderful museum and memorial in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. 47 00:05:30,789.9985 --> 00:05:39,699.999 I encourage you to go and spend a day there and read this book before, during and after stories of the long walk period. 48 00:05:41,664.999 --> 00:06:14,414.899 If you'd like a more general introduction to part of the Cultural interaction between colonial culture whether it's from spain or from england anglo and hispanic I recommend highly the other slavery, which reminds us that slavery was not simply about enslaving Africans and bringing them across as part of the triangle trade to work in plantations in the South, but slavery was also actively engaged in the Western part of what is now the United States and in Mexico as well. 49 00:06:14,634.999 --> 00:06:23,854.998 To learn more about how indigenous peoples were consistently enslaved, put into forced labor, captured, and then forced, uh, to work. 50 00:06:24,154.999 --> 00:06:30,284.999 Um, The Other Slavery is a fascinating book that will help you get to know that part of our history. 51 00:06:32,679.999 --> 00:06:35,19.999 I also want to give you a theological take. 52 00:06:35,19.999 --> 00:06:38,479.999 There's a wonderful book called Saving the Gospel from the Cowboys. 53 00:06:38,909.999 --> 00:06:52,269.999 This is a theological exploration of the ways in which colonial theory and ideology has infiltrated our understanding of the gospel and the way we teach and understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. 54 00:06:52,359.999 --> 00:06:54,929.999 Saving the gospel from the cowboys is sort of you. 55 00:06:55,84.999 --> 00:07:00,194.999 peeling back the theological layers of colonialism from the gospel of Jesus Christ. 56 00:07:00,494.999 --> 00:07:07,804.999 And it's a fabulous work of theology and very eye opening if you're coming from a European heritage kind of perspective. 57 00:07:07,854.999 --> 00:07:20,304.998 I highly recommend that you read Saving the Gospel from the Cowboys and take it to heart because the gospel of Jesus Christ was about liberating people, not about forcing people into slavery and taking all their stuff, including all their land. 58 00:07:20,354.998 --> 00:07:21,974.998 I recommend that book highly. 59 00:07:22,829.999 --> 00:07:32,719.999 And finally, if you've been in an Episcopal church and paying attention to reading lists, you probably have already come across this beautiful book, Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. 60 00:07:33,509.998 --> 00:07:39,169.999 This book is rooted in Indigenous cultures back east, where the sweetgrass is grown. 61 00:07:39,189.999 --> 00:08:17,139.999 It is a wonderful and lyrical introduction to Indigenous ways of thinking about creation and what we would call stewardship of creation, which really should be more, uh, How can we be in relationship with and respect the natural world that has been created by a loving God? How can we not possess, control, and dominate, but rather live within, with respect, and alongside? The major metaphor here with braiding sweetgrass is that when human beings cultivate sweetgrass by harvesting some, but not all of it, the sweetgrass actually grows stronger and thrives. 62 00:08:17,469.999 --> 00:08:22,949.999 The people have the sweetgrass in order for braiding and to make baskets and for their own use. 63 00:08:23,979.999 --> 00:08:45,134.999 The human interaction with nature, the human interaction with the created world, when it is respectful and when we don't take everything, when we don't dominate it all and turn it into profit, But when rather we respectfully take just what we need, the natural world responds with abundance and we have what we need as well. 64 00:08:45,144.998 --> 00:08:52,134.999 So this is a wonderful book that pushes back against the take it all, own it all, use it all up. 65 00:08:52,349.999 --> 00:09:02,779.999 mentality that has often characterized European colonialism and is a refocusing on indigenous ways of understanding and appreciating our natural world. 66 00:09:02,779.999 --> 00:09:08,459.999 So a wonderful book that will help root you in a theological approach to creation care. 67 00:09:08,749.999 --> 00:09:11,899.899 And it's also just a wonderful heartwarming read. 68 00:09:13,339.999 --> 00:09:15,979.999 Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, Diocese of the Rio Grande. 69 00:09:16,529.999 --> 00:09:28,249.999 Let us get to know our Indigenous neighbors, respectfully engage with them in joining them in caring for creation and this land which they have stewarded long before we got here. 70 00:09:28,979.999 --> 00:09:51,279.998 I think we can do that by learning some of the history and by opening our hearts, not just to our own culture, but to get to know and listen to and learn from those who have stewarded this land long before I am blessed to be living here with and among Puebloan peoples, Navajo peoples, and Mescalero and Jicarilla Apache peoples. 71 00:09:51,994.999 --> 00:09:54,44.999 and other indigenous groups as well. 72 00:09:54,384.999 --> 00:10:00,544.999 You'll notice that I don't have any books here about the Apache groups, whether Jicarilla or Mescalero. 73 00:10:00,804.999 --> 00:10:04,364.999 That is a blind spot that I haven't done much study in yet. 74 00:10:04,614.998 --> 00:10:10,294.999 I've begun with the Diné and Puebloan people that are close by where I actually live. 75 00:10:10,624.999 --> 00:10:14,354.999 But of course, the diocese includes those folks as well. 76 00:10:14,424.999 --> 00:10:35,619.899 If you have books about the Hickory and or Mescalero Apache peoples that you think would be helpful for me to read, please let me know because I am very eager to get to know all the indigenous peoples throughout this diocese, both personally, but also to be a knowledgeable person, not just a tourist, not just a consumer showing up to buy stuff. 77 00:10:36,499.999 --> 00:10:43,729.999 A neighbor, someone who loves, respects, and wants to listen to and learn from the indigenous peoples here in the Diocese of the Rio Grande. 78 00:10:43,999.999 --> 00:10:47,19.999 Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, Diocese of the Rio Grande. 79 00:10:47,549.999 --> 00:10:48,169.999 God bless you. 80 00:10:48,329.998 --> 00:10:49,139.999 We'll talk to you soon.