EDINA COMMUNITY LUTHERAN CHURCH
WELCOME TO ECLC'S INDIGENOUS RIGHTS PAGE
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Indigenous Rights Monthly Email Update Archive
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COMING OPPORTUNITIES
The ELCA continues to provide learning opportunities through the Truth and Healing Movement. Scroll down to the Upcoming Events section.
- December 7, 2024, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m., Rise and Repair Public Kick-off and Fundraiser at New City Center / Walker Methodist Church in South Minneapolis. Click to RSVP This is a program from MN Interfaith Power and Light. See more details under the Advocacy, then State section below.
- January 8, 2025, 11 a.m. – noon, private MIA docent-led tour of the MIA exhibit of Pueblo artist Jody Folwell’s exhibit. Thanks to ECLC member Lorraine Hart, 20 ECLC folks can take advantage of this! Watch for details forthcoming.
- January 12, 2025, 7 – 8 p.m. ECLC Book Discussion. Join fellow ECLC folks for the hybrid first session of a two-part book discussion of Vine Deloria’s Custer Died for Your Sins: And Indian Manifesto. Make a point of getting the book from an Indigenous-run store like local Birchbark Books, or used. The second session will be on February 2. Sign up here.
- March 31 – April 5, 2025. SW MN Indigenous Sites trip. ECLC and Holy Trinity will be hosting a driving trip into SW MN to learn more about Indigenous history. This trip will support Native-owned and run businesses. If you have interest, indicate that here. Watch for more information!
To trace our initial education emphasis during the fall of 2022, you can access lists of curated resources and activities below. Use them to broaden your understanding of our Indigenous neighbors, the sovereign nations who were here before European settlers took over their land.
In spite of the U.S. government’s and the Church’s intentional, systemic attempts to exterminate their life-ways, their languages, their cultures, and their religions, Indigenous People are still here and are our neighbors.
This kind of history calls for the long and difficult work of justice, confession and healing, hoping to rebuild the respect and honor our Indigenous neighbors deserve as sovereign nations and children of God.
For Christian white people, “doing the work” is a baptismal calling, and expresses the mission of our congregation: to give witness to love and justice at God’s welcome table and in the world.
LAND, LAND, LAND
Injustice legitimized by the Doctrine of Discovery spread across centuries and geographies. In the US, treaties almost always forced Indigenous people from their homelands.How might we, who now occupy these lands, acknowledge this history and act in ways that move us toward justice?
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INDIGENOUS STORYTELLING FOR ALL AGES
Indigenous peoples have a long history as storytellers. Take time this week to listen to some of these contemporary storytellers.
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ADVOCATING FOR JUSTICE
There are many opportunities to advocate for a better way. The insidiousness of the assumptions driven by the Doctrine of Discovery manifested in the late 19th Century and forward as Indian Boarding Schools. Indigenous children were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools which forbade their language and other cultural expressions. In our day, Indigenous people continue to disappear, too often murdered, proportinately far more often than other groups. These are just two justice issues that call for our attention.
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A DIFFICULT HISTORY
Our county's history with its Indigenous peoples is a record too often unknown because it is too often unspoken.
Begin with the Doctrine of Discovery.
Let learning open your heart.
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INDIGENOUS EXPRESSION - THE ARTS
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INDIGENOUS CUISINE - DECOLONIZED FOOD
Our Indigenous neighbors are taking some fascinating approaches to their own health and wellbeing,
returning to the foods that sustained them for thousands of years before their economies were destroyed
when our government used treaties to take the land that had sustained them.