Uhm, hello my name is Nelson Bates.
Uhm, I am born for the
Water-Flows-Together Clan.
Uhm, my father's clan is the
Bitter Water People as well.
Uhm, my grandparents,
my grandpa's clan
is the Water-Flows-Together Clan
as well.
And my paternal parents,
my paternal grandparents' clan is
the People-Walking-Into-The-Water.
Uhm, I am full Native American.
I'm Navajo.
I am the only Navajo student
here at Calvin.
And welcome to the January Series.

Uhm, I'd just like to start us off
with a quick word of prayer.
Dear God, thank you for this
wonderful time that we can come
together and learn about
other cultures, and understand
how you brought us into our world,
and how you presented to our,
how you presented yourself
to us as, uhm, Navajo people,
as everyone in our, in our world,
and I'd just like to say thank you,
and bless everyone here
and let everyone have a good day.
And let all those in the world
who need to be blessed be blessed.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
-Good afternoon everyone,
and welcome to the 30th
Anniversary of the January Series.
My name is Michelle Lloyd-Paige,
and I am the Executive Associate to
to the President
for Diversity and Inclusion.
And it is my pleasure to come
before you this afternoon
to--I was going to say this evening
but it's not quite evening,
even though the stars
are out.
Uhm, it's my pleasure come before
you to introduce our speaker
for this afternoon.
Our speaker is Mark Charles.
And he is a writer, an advocate,
and a consultant.
You should know that
he now lives in Washington D.C.
But he has lived on the
Navajo reservation.
He has a passion for seeking
not only to help himself
to better understand our history,
but to invite others along
on a journey of understanding--
an understanding of the
complexities of American history,
and that intersectionality of
history, of race, culture, and faith.
He does this so that together
we can forge a path
of healing and conciliation,
so that one day we can be a nation
that talks about reconciliation.
He is a correspondent and
a regular columnist
for the Native News Online.
And he is the author of the
popular blog,
"Reflections from the Hogan."
He serves on the Board of Christian
Community Development Association
and consults with Calvin's
Institute of Christian Worship.
And he is a founding partner of the
National Conference for National
for--excuse me--for Native students
called "Would Jesus Eat Fry Bread?"
This is something that I
appreciate about Mark.
There's a lot of things you can
read about him.
But what I truly admire about Mark
is that he invites other people
to come unto an
uncomfortable journey.
But he doesn't just send you on
that journey and say,
"You deal with it."
He comes alongside and he sits
with you,
so that together we can cry.
Together, we can grow.
Together, we can learn.
That's what I appreciate
about Mark.
At the conclusion of today's
presentation,
Mark will be available to greet
audience members
in the west lobby of this building.
Calvin College is grateful to the
friends of the January Series
for underwriting today's presentation.
Please join me in giving a
warm welcome to Mark Charles.
(clapping)
Ya'at'eeh Ya'at'eeh*******
[speaking Navajo]
Um in the Navajo culture
when you introduce yourself,
you always give your fore clans
We're a matrilineal people and so
when we uh introduce ourselves
We give our identities that come
from our mother's mother
So my mother as many of you know is
actually American of Dutch heritage
and so when I introduce myself, I say *****
which translated then means
the Wooden Shoe people
(laughter)
My Father's mother, my second clan
is Tó'aheedlíinii which is the
waters-that-flow-together
My third clan, my mother's
father is also ***
And then my fourth clan,
my father's father is Tódich’ii’nii,
That's the Bitter-Water-People
one of the original clans
of a Navajo tribe
It is an honor for me to be here
today to talk about race trauma
and the doctrine of discovery.
There are many uh, I've given this
talk in many different forms
and and shapes over the last
several years and I can almost
name this talk,
what we don't talk about
Because as Americans,
we actually have a very long list
of things we don't talk about
Now I have to warn you
in the next 45mins
I am going to say some things
that are going to shock you
I am going to say some things
that are going to offend you
I'm going to say some things
that you've never heard
I'm gonna teach you some history
you've never heard before
At different points in this
presentation, you would probably
want to walk out or to
throw something at me
I encourage you not to
do those things
(laughter)
I instead invite you to stay
in the dialogue
To stay engaged, we will get
to a better place but we have to
get through some very
uncomfortable list of things
that we as a nation and as a Church
don't know how to talk about
One of the things, we don't know
how to talk about is
 Terrence Crutcher
This African American man who
was shot by police
a few months ago. Publicly, we
don't know how to talk about that
We don't know how to talk about
this young man
who just a few days ago on
Facebook Live was attacked
possibly in a racially
motivated hate crime
He was white and his
attackers were not
We don't know how to talk
about Colin Kaepernick.
Successful NFL player, who on the
largest stage in our nation
which is the NFL. Everytime he
hears our song he takes a knee
We're used to having
the angry black man
Or we're used to having the black
man who affirms our nation as great
We don't know what to do with a
successful black man
who very articulately and quietly
and peacefully is protesting
that there are some deep problems
with the history
and the foundations of our country
We don't know how to talk about
the Dakota Access Pipeline
This pipeline that's being built
from North Dakota down to Illinois
and is gathering the largest
group of Native Americans
in solidarity, over 200 tribes
tens of thousands of people coming
together to protest
and tell our nation that water
is life and you can't drink oil
We don't know how to talk about that
We also don't know how to talk
about here in Western Michigan
The Potawatomi. The Potawatomi where
the people who were ethnically
cleansed from this land, so that
Grand Rapids could be built
and after the treaty of Chicago in
1833, they were moved forcibly
down to Oklahoma
and other parts of the country so
that white settlers could move
into this land and create
this place
We don't know how to talk about
these things and the reason
we don't know how to talk about
these things is because
we don't know how to talk
about our history
both our history as a Church as
well as our history as a nation
So I wanna go all the way
back to the 1st century
In the first century, we had
the Church on one side
and we had the empire on the other
when you became a member of the
Church through your baptism
your confession, your discipleship
and your community you knew that
you stood in opposition to the
empire. You knew that there was a
good chance because of your belief
because of your faith, because of
your membership in the Church
You were gonna be persecuted
and possibly even killed
by the empire
Now, in the 3rd century
In the 4th century,
something changed
Constantine was emperor of Rome
and while he was emperor,
he became a Christian
and he was so enthrilled by this
that he decided to Christianize Rome
Now, this was never the notion of
Jesus
Jesus was very adamant, He was not
here on this earth to create
a Christian empire. When Satan
tempted Him and said bow to me
and I will give you the nations of
the world, Jesus said no
When the people came to Him after
feeding the 4,000
they tried to take Him by force
and make Him king, Jesus said no
When Jesus was before Pilate, and
he said "don't you know I have
the power, I have the uh authority
to kill you"
Jesus said you only have the
authority my father gave you
and if my kingdom were of this
earth, my servants would come and
help me but my kingdom is of
another place"
Jesus never came to establish
a Christian empire
He came to plant a Church.
He came to begin a community, He
came to reveal God and Himself
through to the world through a
Church not a political entity
and so in the 4th century,
Constantine created something
that Jesus and the early Church
fathers were adamantly against
 which was a Christian empire
That never existed in the writings
of the New Testament
that notion was not there
and in creating this Christian
empire he nearly destroyed
the understanding of what the
Church was
  because now instead of joining
the Church through your baptism
your discipleship, your confession
and your community, now you became
a member of the Church through
your citizenship in the empire
So in the next few 100 years, you
will begin to have some problems
 because the empire begins doing
what empires do
 which is expand and protect
themselves through war
 Well, a plain text reading of
Jesus' teachings
 and of the teachings of Paul,
don't allow you to go out and
  begin killing on behalf of your
Lord so we needed someone to come
out and do some theological
gymnastics to justify why this
Christian empire was behaving
like the empires of the world
and we came up, thanks to St.
Augustine with a just war theory
 Over the centuries, the just war
theories morphed into the crusades
the crusades were about expanding
the empire as well as protecting
Jerusalem. In the 13th century we
see in the writings of the papal bulls
 the identification of a new class
of people called the infidel
the infidel was a name originally
meant to refer to the Moors or to
the Muslims. It was later applied
to indegenous peoples
People who did not worship the
God of the Christian Church
and we praise this class of infidels
the subhuman category of people
Now this creation, changed the
justification for war because now
instead of going to war, because
of a just war theory now you can
go to war based on your
theological grounds
 You were fighting the other,
you were fighting the infidel
 you were fighting this other
entity the subhuman category
of people
And so it's out of
this understanding
of whats going on in the
13th century
that in the 1400's
we have the writing
of the papal bulls
saying things like
invade, search-out, capture,
vanquish, and subdue
all citizens and
pagans whatsoever
reduce their person to
perpetual slavery
convert them to his and
their use and profit
this papel bull along with
other papel bulls
written between 1452 and 1493
collectively became
known as what we call
the doctrine of discovery
The doctrine of discovery
is essentially
the church in Europe saying
to the nations of Europe
whereever you go
whatever land you find
not ruled by Christian rulers
those people are less than human
and the land is yours for the taking
This was literally the doctrine
that allowed European nations
to go into Africa,
colonize the continent
 and enslave the African people
They weren't fully human.
This was the same doctrine
that let Christopher Columbus
who was lost at sea
land in this new world
that was already
inhabited by millions
and claimed to have discovered it.
If you think about it you
cannot discover lands
that are already inhabited
If you don't believe me,
leave your cell phones,
your purses, your car keys
out in front of you
I'll come by and discover
them for you
*audience laughing*
That's not discovery,
that's stealing
That's conquering,
that's colonizing
Because to this day
we refer to what
Christopher Columbus did
as discovery,
it reveals the implicit
racial bias of our nation
 which is that people of color,
Native Americans
are not fully human
This makes the doctrine of discovery
A systemically racist doctrine
That assumes the dehumanization
of people of color
Now the challenge
with this doctrine
is that over the years it
became embedded
 In the foundations of our nation.
So in 1763 King George
drew a line down the
Appalachian Mountains
and he said to the colonists,
That they no longer had
the right of discovery
of the empty Indian lands
west of Appalachia
This upset the colonists,
they wanted access to those lands
so a few years later they
wrote a letter of protest
In their letter of protest,
the accuse the King
of raising the conditions of new
appropriations of land
They went on in their letter,
to state that he has
excited the domestic
insurrections amongst us,
and has endeavoured to
bring on the inhabitants
of our frontiers, the
merciless Indian Savages
They sign their letter on
July 4, 1776
literally 30 lines
below this statement
"all men are created equal"
The Declaration of Independence
refers to natives as
merciless Indian Savages
making it very clear the only
reason our founding fathers
used the inclusive term
"all men"
is because they had a very
narrow definition of
who was and who was not human
This of course makes our
Declaration of Independence
a racist document
that assumes the dehumanization
of people of color
Now a few years later
our founding father wrote
another document
They began this document with the
words "We the People"
"In order to form a more
perfect union,"
"establish Justice, insure
domestic Tranquility"
This of course is the preamble to
the Constitution of
the United States of America
However in article 1 section 2,
the section of the constitution
that determines
who is and who is not included
who is and who is not covered
by this constitution
A. It never mentions women,
it specifically excludes natives
and it counts black people as
three fifths of a person
so literally the constitution
was written to protect
White land owning men
We have to stop for
a minute and pause
and wrap our heads
around that
The purpose of the constitution
as it was written was to protect
white land owning men
we act surprised today that
women earn 70 cents to the dollar
this shouldn't shock us,
the constitution is working
we act surprised today
that our prisons are filled
 with people of color
this shouldn't shock us,
the constitution is working
we act outraged that in 2010
The United States Supreme Court
sided with Citizens United
and ruled that corporations now
have the same rights
to political free speech
as individuals
creating an open door for
super pacts
not limited donations to
politcal campaigns
this should not shock us,
the constitution is doing
exactly what is was designed to do
it is protecting the interest of
white land owning men
Now maybe you are thinking
"Wait didn't we correct that?"
Well about 100 years later, we
passed the 14th ammendment
The 14th ammendment was meant
to address article 1 section 2
It was meant to extend the
right of citizenship
to anyone born on
this continent
under the jurisdiction
of the government
however, it did not give women
the right to vote
they were still excluded
It did not include natives,
we were still excluded
and even though it gave some
rights of citizenship
to a few former slaves,
we cannot forget that
Jim Crow laws were written
after the 14th ammendment
that segregation was enacted
after the 14th ammendment
that internmnet camps were enacted,
after the 14th ammendment
and we cannot forget that in 1970
we used the 14th ammendment in
Roe vs Wade
And now we concluded that
unborn babies aren't human
and therefore, they can be aborted
the problem we have
is our constitution
does not have a value for life
the value of the constitution
is for exploitation and profit
and the practice of the
constitution is dehumanization
This makes the constitution
of the United States
 a systemically racist document
that assumes the
white land owning male has the
authority to determine
who is and who is not human
*pause*
A few years later
In 1823, there was this supreme
court case, Johnson verse M'Intosh
This is 2 men of European
descent they are litigating
over a single piece of land
One of them got the land
from a native tribe
the other got the land
from the government
  They want to know who
owned it
The case goes all the way
to the supreme court
The court had to decide the
principle upon which
land titles were based
They concluded the principle
was that discovery
gave title to the government
by whose subjects
or by whose authority,
it was made
against all other European
governments
and that title might be
consummated by possession
They went on to use the doctrine
of discovery to determine
that natives who were here first
but are less than human
we only have the right of
occupancy to land
like a fish occupies water or
a bird occupies air
and Europeans have the right of
discovery to the land
and therefore they have
the true title to it
This precedent by the
Marshall Court
along with a few other
cases during that era
created the legal precedent
for land titles
this precedent and the
doctrince of discovery
will reference by the Supreme
Court as recently as 2005
This of course makes the
United States Supreme Court
a systemically
racist court
 that to this day has
legal precedent
based on the dehumanization
of people of color
Now initially, the Protestant Church
pushed back against the doctrine
this was the Catholic doctrine
the didn't fully buy into it.
In 1640 John Winthrop was in
the Boston Harbor
with a group of colonists ready
to plant the Boston colony.
In this boat, on this boat, he
preached a sermon
and in his sermon, it was called a
mall of Christian charity
he referred to the colonist, he
compared them to a City on a Hill.
Now he's borrowing from the image
of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount
where he told his disciples to be
a lamp on a stand,
 a city on a hill shining the good
deeds into this dark world.
John goes on in his sermon to exhort
the church in all meekness,
gentleness, patience and liberality,
rejoice together, mourn together,
labor and suffer together, to keep
the unity of the spirit
in the bond of peace. These are
good, basic Christian exhortations.
At the end of his sermon, he begins
to motivate them by quoting from
Deuteronomy chapter 30.
Now Deuteronomy chapter 30 is the
point in the scriptures where the
 people of Israel are standing at the
banks of the Jordan River
about ready to take possession of
their promised land
and God is reiterating the threats
and promises
of his land covenant to them.
If you obey me, I will do these
things for you,
If you disobey me I will do these
things to you.
And in that passage it says, But if
our hearts shall turn away so that
we will not obey and worship other
Gods, we shall surely perish
out of the good Land whether we
pass over,
now Deuteronomy 30 says river
but in his sermon, John Winthrop
says vast sea.
Why does he say vast sea?
Well cause he didn't cross a river,
he crossed an ocean
So what is he implying?
Based on the teachings of Jesus
to be a city on a hill
and based on the mallable
testament Israel,
they are standing at the banks
of the promised land
about ready to go and take
possession of it.
Now who here has read the book
of Joshua?
What is God's command to the people
of Joshua
are to the people of Israel in
the book of Joshua?
To kill everybody.
What's his real sin in the book
of Joshua?
They don't kill everybody.
Promised land for one people is
literally God ordained genocied
 for another.
I call this sermon the birth of
American exceptionalism.
This idea perculates for
about another 100 years.
Middle of the 1700s we begin
expanding westward,
we go past the Applachian mountains,
we go past the Mississippi river,
as we're expanding west,
this second great awakening
begins happening
there's this renewal of churches,
a growth of denominations
there's this religious ferver as
our settlers are moving
further and further west.
And it's in the early 1800s that
the term manifest destiny is coined
This belief that this nation of
settlers of immigrants
had the God-given right to rule
this continent
from sea to shining sea.
So now that we have a systemically
racist doctrine of discovery,
a racist declaration of independence,
a racist constitution,
a racist supreme court, and a
God ordained right to commit genocide
Now we have a bunch of history
we've never talked about.
I want you to think about the 19th
century.
About a year ago I did some research
and I looked at every year
of our nation from 1775 to 2016.
And I put in blue every year I found
our nation was in a
declared state of war or armed
military conflict
against another nation or entity.
I then put in red every year
that we were fighting
against the native peoples.
If we look in the 19th century,
for almost the entire century
and for 75 straight years, we were
in a continuous state of war
against the indigineous peoples
of the land.
The list of wars below are primarily
the wars we fought against natives
in the 19th century.
It was during the 19th century,
this is the century that we refer to
in our history books as our century
of expansion.
This was the century we added
almost 30 new states to our union.
Well clearly this was not a century
of expansion, this was a
century of ethnic cleansing and
genocide.
It was during this century that we
passed the Indian Removal Act.
The act of congress that in practice
gave the military
the right to forcibly remove tribes
from their lands in the east to
empty lands further in the west.
This resulted in the trail of tears
for the Cherokee, the Chickasaw,
the Chawktau.
This resulted in the long walk
for the Navajo
as we're ethnically cleansed from
the southwest.
 All totaled about a dozen tribes
experience force relocations
 because of the passing of this act.
And tens of thousands of native
peoples die as a direct result
of the passage of this act.
In 1864 we have the Sand Creek Massacre
we had about 150 to 200 Cyan and
Iraqaho men, women and children
they're encamped over a hillside
in Colorado, they're waving a
white flag of surrender and an
American flag
to show that they are peacefully.
And a US army led bya Methodist
Minister comes over the hill
and he orders all of them slaughtered.
Later they reported that their
genitalia were paraded down
the streets of Denver.
In 1879 we had the Indian Boarding
Schools begin.
This was the practice our nation
had of forcibly
assimilating Native Americans to
western European culture
children were taken from their homes,
they were putting in these military
style boarding schools
they were punished for speaking
their languages,
punished for practicing their culture.
The stories of abuse. Sexual,
physical, mental that come out
of these schools are horrible.
We also cannot forget that the
Christian Reformed Church
ran one such boarding school that
began in the early 1900s
and stayed a boarding school until
the 1970s and 80s.
The stated goal of these schools
the call that Indian schools
which was the first school in the
late 1800s,
 the stated goal of these schools
was to kill the Indian,
 to save the man.
In 1887 we passed the
Daz act
This was an act that after we had
already cleared the land
through the Indian removal, we
still wanted to open up
more land for white settlers and so
the Daz Act, what it is is that
it allotted 160 acres of land to
every male native over the age of 18.
The rest of the land was then opened
up to white settlement.
This reduced native land holdings
by about two thirds.
A land mass roughly the size
of California
was eventually taken from native
peoples through the passage the Daz act.
In 1890 we had the Massacre at
Wounded Knee
we know a bit more about this from
our history books
we teach it a little more commonly
in our schools in classrooms
this was one of the last massacres
of native peoples
it happened in 1890 where about
300 native warriors
were massacred in a single day
at wounded knee.
What we don't talk about normally
is that the United States Congress
 gave 20 congressional medals
of honor
to the US soldiers who
participated in this massacre.
And that every effort to have these
medals rescinded has failed.
On December 19, 2009 congress
passed house resolution 3326
This is the 2010 department of
appropriations act.
A bill laying out the appropriations
for the DOD of 2010
67 page bill.
Page 45 subsection 8113 is titled
apology to native peoples
of the United States.
What follows is the 7 bullet
point apology
it mentions no specific tribe,
no specifc treaty
and no specific injustice.
It basically says you had some
nice land, our citizens didn't
take it very politely, let's just
call it all of our land
and steward it together
and the ends with a disclaimer that
says nothing in here is legally binding.
To date this apology has not been
announced, read or publicized
by the White House or by Congress.
We don't teach a history of America,
we teach a mythology.
The mythology of America is that we
are a nation that was discovered
we value equality, expansion,
exceptionalism
and we have liberty and justice
for all.
That is the mythology of the
United States of America.
And that mythology runs very
very deep.
Who here has been to the Lincoln
Memorial?
Keep your hands up
Who here has been to the museum at
the base of the Lincoln Memorial?
The base of Lincoln Memorial on
the left hand side as you walk up
to the memorial, there's a small
museum the size of
a small classroom.
In this museum, on each wall are
plaques about the size of a door
with different writings and thoughts
and ideas of President Lincoln
and his legacy.
On one of these walls, on the left
hand side, south side of the room
There is this quote
It says, I would save the union,
my paramount object struggle
is to save the union is not to
save or destroy slavery.
If I could save the union without
freeing any slave,
I would do it.
And if I could do it by freeing all
the slaves, I would do it.
And if I could do it by freeing some
and leaving others alone
I would also do that.
At the base of the Lincoln Memorial,
etched in stone,
hangind on a wall, is a plaque
that literally says
according to Abraham Lincoln
"Black lives don't matter."
Now I want to pause
for just a second here.
I realize I've given you
a lot of history.
There's probably a wave of emotions
going on in you right now.
I don't want a long discourse.
I don't want long winded answers.
I want two or three words.
There's no right or wrong answer.
There's no good or bad answer.
Emote to me.
What's going on right now?
Tell me what you're thinking.
Tell me what you're feeling.
Sadness. So right.
Unfair.
Disgust.
Shame.
Lament.
No reconciliation.
Hate.
Tragedy.
Division.
Open our eyes.
Yes.
Helplessness.
This is one of the challenges
that we face as a nation,
which is we don't teach our history;
we teach a mythology.
Instead of dehumanization,
we teach discovery.
Our equality is only
for a select few.
Instead of ethnic cleansing,
we say expansion.
Instead of genocide,
we say exceptionalism.
And we've never come to grips
with the fact that
the liberty and justice that's
outlined in our founding documents
only exists for white
land owing men.
We don't know what
to do with this history.
So how do we move forward?
What do we do?
Many nations have had
what are called
Truth and Reconciliation Comissions.
National dialogues about
their history.
A way to bring together these
diverse and even battling parties
to find a way to speak the truth
and to seek reconciliation.
South Africa after
the fall of Apartheid,
they had a Truth and Reconciliation
Comission.
Rwanda after this bloody civil war
had a Truth and Reconciliation.
Canada after a very
expensive lawsuit
brought by residential
school survivors
came together and had a national
Truth and Reconciliation Comission.
I'm convinced that, as a nation,
we need to have a national dialogue
on race along the lines of a
Truth and Reconciliation Comission.
But we have to make a few changes
because the context of this word
and the wording of this phrase
doesn't make sense.
Because in our context,
the reconciliation
we're talking about is racial.
Now race is not a
genetic difference.
It's a human construct.
There's no distinguishable,
genetic difference of race.
Race is a human construct.
And in America,
race was constructed
for the purpose of
oppressing and dividing.
So the black race was constructed
through what we call,
"The One Drop Rule."
What's "The One
Drop Rule?"
Well, if you have a single drop of
African blood, you're black.
Why do we have this rule?
Because blacks were our labor force.
"The One Drop Rule" allowed
a white slave owner
to rape his female slaves and
produce more baby slaves.
For Native Americans,
for the American Indian,
we had "The Blood Quantum Rule."
What's "The Blood Quantum Rule?"
Well, you're full. You're half.
You're a quarter.
You're an eighth. You're a sixteenth.
You're a thiry-second.
Then you're bred out of existence.
Why do we have this rule?
Because the mythology of our nation
is this land was discovered--
it was empty;
there was no one here.
So we want as few Natives as possible.
So race is a human construct.
and in America, it was constructed for
the purpose of oppressing and dividing.
Reconciliation implies a
previous harmony.
Clearly that never existed.
Racial reconciliation is a way,
as a nation,
we perpetuate the myth of America.
Things used to be great,
now they're falling apart.
We do a lot of things to perpetuate
the myth of our nation.
I don't like term
"racial reconciliation."
I started using the term
"racial conciliation."
Conciliation is merely the
mediation of a dispute.
Reconciliation lets us
perpetuate the myth.
Conciliation allows us to have
a much more honest starting point.
This thing started out bad.
We're not trying to get back to a
previous harmony; we're just trying
to get to a better place
than we are today.
And so our nation doesn't need
a national truth and reconcliation
commission; we need a national
truth and conciliation commission.
A national dialogue.
Now, to prep our nation for this
dialogue, there's four audiences
that I wanna engage with.
The first audience is the church.
The church has been in bed with
the empire since Constantine.
We wrote the Doctrine of Discovery.
We have to take ownership of it.
We have to acknowledge
our complicity in it,
and we need to lament it.
My good friend Soong-chan Rah,
he and I are writing a book
on the Doctrine of Discovery
called The Truth Be Told.
And he talks about lament, and
he says one aspect of lament
is it's like being at
a funeral derge.
There's a dead body in the
casket; it's not coming back.
The only thing you can do is weep.
As a nation, as a church, we have
hundreds, thousands of years
of dead bodies in caskets.
They're not gonna come back to life.
The only thing we can do is weep;
the only thing we can do is lament.
And trust
that the pattern we see with God
throughout the scriptures is that
when his people lament,
God meets them there.
God shows up.
So my first audience, I wanna
convince the church that
we need to go through
a season of lament.
My second audience
is native peoples.
I wanna convince our people that
we are not the helpless victims
of an oppressive
colonial government.
We are the host people of the land,
and that we have to be acting
into the role of host.
I love what's happening at
Standing Rock right now;
I love what's happening, which is
you see our native peoples,
our native communities,
coming together.
And acting into, playing
into, the role of host,
telling this nation that's obsessed
with its economy and the
immediate returns on
their investments,
telling this nation
that water is life!
You cannot keep destroying your
enviorment for the sake of your
short-term economic goals.
You can't drink oil!
Trying to convince our nation,
taking a lead in the conversation
of we have to treat the
enviorment differently.
The third audience I
want to engage with,
and this is where I wanna
spend the next few minutes,
is with communities of color:
African Americans, Hispanic Americans,
Asian Americans, even
Native Americans.
This is my message to our
communities of color:
Most of us have heard
of what is called PTSD,
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
This is a version of trauma that
you experience when you're
on the receiving end, when you
experience, when you witness violence.
You have a condition called PTSD.
There's another condition
called Historical Trauma.
So PTSD is a individual diagnosis:
this person, that individual,
has PTSD.
Historical Trauma is how you
understand the dissatisfaction
in a broader community
that's been oppressed.
It's been proven to be passed
down generation to generation
through genetics,
and it's how you understand
the broader community.
I refer to PTSD as a multi-
generational, communal
manifestation of PTSD. So
Historical Trauma is
the multi-generational, communal
manifestation of PTSD.
Does that make sense?
Now, there's another trauma called
PITS, that's being researched.
PITS is Perpetration-Induced
Traumatic Stress.
PITS is like PTSD in every way,
shape, and form, except
instead of afflicting the person
who received the violence,
PITS afflicts the person who
caused the violence.
It comes out of this understanding
by Socrates that "the doer
of injustice is more miserable
than the sufferer."
So I'm hypothesizing that if PTSD
has a multi-generational,
communal manifestation that we
call Historical Trauma,
and we can see how our communities
of color are suffering from
Historical Trauma out of our history
of the Doctrine of Discovery,
then I'm hypothesizing that PITS
must also have a multi-
generational, communal manifestation,
and that is the trauma that
I identify White America
is suffering from.
Because you cannot build a nation
on five hundred years of
dehumanizing injustice without
traumatizing yourself.
So my message to people of
color is that White America
is another group of
traumatized people.
So one of the first symptoms of
trauma is shock and denial.
When we understand White America
as a group of traumatized people,
it's easy to see their
shock and denial.
So this buried apology in
the appropriations bill,
this isn't, this isn't...
racism, this is truama.
This is shock and denial.
We have Texas and Oklahoma passing
laws saying you can only teach
patriotic history.
This isn't racism, this is trauma.
They're so overwhelmed by what
they did to become who they are,
they can't even teach it anymore.
In fact, they're trying to remove the
word "slavery" from their textbooks.
'Cause they can't believe
what they're standing on,
they can't even teach it anymore.
Now I wanna go in a little
more in-depth here,
because last summer, there was a-
there was a experience of
White Trauma here
on this very stage.
The Christian Reformed Church
was dealing with the
Doctrine of Discovery. I was
a member of a task force
assigned by our Synod
to study, investigate, and try
to engage a dialogue
with the Christian Reformed Church
on the doctrine of discovery
Now I've worked with
many denominations
throughout the country,
trying to engage this conversation
on the doctrince of discovery
and what I always ask these
denominations is
Where is the touch point for your
complicity in this doctrine
For the methodists, its this
general that they had
this leader that they had
at um Sand Creek
For other denominations,
the Catholics, its when
they ran boarding schools
And for Rehoboth or
for the Christian Reformed Church
Our touchpoint with the doctrine
of discovery is
our mission to the native peoples
that we established in the 1900's
that we called Rehobis and the
boarding school that we ran
for almost 75-80 years
This is the focal point of our
trauma
And so in our report, we included
in our report two stories
of boarding school survivors
One of the stories of some
boarding school survivor
from a BIA Boarding school,
the other story was from
a boarding school survivor
from Rehoboth
When our report got to
the board of trustee's
before it was released,
they pulled
the story of the Rehoboth boarding
school survivor
It did not go forward
with the whole report
*pauses*
So when we got here
to Synod
and we discussed the
doctrine of discovery
We passed a resolution
Where we acknowledged that the
original doctrine of discovery
is heresy and we reject and
condemn it
it helped shape western culture
and led to great injustices
This is a very good resolution
that we passed
But then if you were here,
we then almost immediately
went into a 20 minute sharing time
about how great our
boarding school was
and all the blessings
that came out of it
And then we passed a resolution
that said
That synod, nevertheless, recognize
aslo the gospel motivation
in response to the Great Commission
as well as the love and grace
extended over many years
by missionaries sent our
by the CRCNA to the Indigenous
peoples of Canada and the
United States. For this we God
thanks
and honor their dedication
*drinks water*
We can't do that
You can't reject and condemn
the doctrine of discovery
and label it as heresy
and then deny that you were
involved with that
You can't do it
That's shock and denial
That's an example of the trauma
of white America
We don't know what to
do with our history
We don't know how to acknowledge
what happened
and what took place and the
history we're standing on
We don't know how to talk about it.
White America is another group of
traumatized people
And we have to understand that
as people of color
if we are going to engage this
dialogue
*pauses*
Now another touchpoint
of our trauma
and I'm going to go a few minutes
over, this is
I'm getting a little bit
in-depth here
is American exceptionalism
I identify American exceptionalism
as the coping mechanism
for a nation in deep denial of its
genocidal past
as well as its current
racist reality
We don't know what to do
with the doctrine of discovery
We don't know what to do that our
land titles are based on the
dehumanization of people of color
We don't know what to do with the
fact that our history
is a history of ethic cleansing
and genocide
And so we cope with that by telling
ourselves we're exceptional
We have a manifest destiny. We have
a special relationship with God
This myth runs so deep
that a year ago
a year and a half ago
almost 2 years ago
March 5th, March 3rd 2015
Benjamin Netanyahu
was speaking to a joint session
of our congress
He was here lobbying against
the Iran Nuclear deal
that the White House was negotiating
and he was speaking to a very
divided, very partisan congress
And he had to get both sides
behind him
So at the begining of his speech
towards the begining of his speech
he said to our congress
"Because America and Israel
share a common destiny, the
destiny of promised lands
I wanted to scream
The United States of America is
not God's chosen people
Do any of you believe for a
moment that the prime
minister of Israel thinks that
you and I share in the
sacred covenant his people
have with the God of Abraham
Do any of you believe for a moment
that the prime minister of Israel
believes you and I are the
manifestation of the new Israel
and this is our promised land
and God has blessed us
and provided for us here
Or is he merely a very savy
politician who understands
all to well the trauma of his
audience and knows what they
need to hear
American exceptionalism is the
coping mechanism of a nation
in deep denial of its
genocidal past
We have a very dysfunctional
and co-dependent relationship
  with the nation state of Israel
 We need their history of taking
possession of Canaan
and ethnically cleansing their
promised land
to justify our genocide
of native peoples
and they need our mythology
of a manifest destiny and the
new Israel to justify
their current oppression
of the Palestinian people
The United States and Israel have
a very dysfunctional
and co-dependent relationship
that is all intertwined
in this modern outliving
of promised lands and
manifest destiny
and its very very very unhealthy
Now when you deal with
trauma patients
trauma patients have what
I call triggers
A trigger is something that takes
you out of reality
and back into the chaos of the
moment of when the trauma occured
So if you understand white
America as another group
of traumatized people
its easy to see their triggers
So two terms of a black
president is a trigger
for 8 years seeing someone
governing from the oval office
instead of building the oval office
has traumatized our nation
Without President Obama,
we never elect Donald Trump
it doesn't happen.
It's a trigger.
Any sort of national
dialogue on gun control
is a trigger
White America cannot have this
conversation without
screaming at each other.
ISIS is a trigger
Why is ISIS a trigger?
Well, they're a group
of religous zealots
ethnically cleansing a land
to set up their own psuedo
religious empire
*pauses*
We don't know what to
do with that
that reflection is so familiar
it just freaks us out
this is why Paris got bombed and
we somehow made it all about us
Standing Rock Sioux
The Dakota Access Pipeline
is a trigger
When you have a nation thats
built on the extermination
of an entire group of people
when you see those people
come together
even though it is in solidarity
for peaceful protest,
prayer, and cermony
That's terrifying
And it ellicits response like this
Our nation doesn't know what
to do with its history
Now why to I refer to
this as trauma
Because in most racial dialogues
White America is either
racist or they're fragile
neither on of those are helpful
If white America is racist
If you are racist just because
you're white, there is no room
for them in the dialogue
that's not helpful
If white America is fragile
it means we have to walk
around on eggshells
We have to sooth things
over for them
By understanding white
America is traumatized
what I'm trying to do is to
create a space for the
reaction that we get from
the dominant culture
without giving them
control of the situation
when you're a conselor and you're
dealing with a patient who is
 traumatized and they begin
freaking out
You say this is good you're
making the connection
You're freaking out over something
and its not the right thing
but you're making the connection
and you're finally connecting
your emotions and your reality in
some way
and you try to build on that
But you don't get in their and
mix it up with your patient
You don't start slugging it
out with them
'Cause you understand that their
trauma is making them upset
about something besides you
even though its venting
and coming towards you
*pauses*
I'm trying to help us understand
the reactions that we see
from white America
so that we don't give them control
but we do create a space
where we can actually have
the conversation
and we need to have
the conversation
We need to find a way to
talk about these things
There's something I want
to end with
There's an aboringinal leader
named Georgia Rassmus
and he says where common
memories lacking
where people don't share in
the same past
there can be no real community
If you want to build community
you have to start by creating
a common memory
I love this quote
This quote gets to the heart of
our nation's problem with race
which is we don't have
a common memory
we have a dominant culture
that has a memory of discovery
expansion, exceptionalism,
opporunity and we have
communities of color that
have the lived experience
of stolen land, broken treaties,
slavery, ethnic cleansing,
Jim Crow laws, boarding schools,
internment camps
there's no common memory
We have to find a way
to create this
We need to have a national
dialogue on race
We need to find a way to deal with
the truth of our history
so that we can move forward
and create a better community
We don't need racial reconciliation
We need racial conciliation
and that is what I want
to invite you into
I want to invite you into
understanding our history
sitting in this moment,
learning how to lament
feeling this uncomfortability,
and finding a way
to talk about it
because until we learn how to
do that we're going to continue
to go our separate ways, to be
devisive and even to self-destruct
and to destroy one another
*pauses*
Thank you very much
*applause*
We have just a few minutes
for questions
