Extending Apology to the Spirits and Ancestors
Missing the Mark
When I was in grade 3 of my small elementary school in rural Saskatchewan, I became obsessed with the Kenny Rogers song “the Gambler”. I sang it to myself, over and over: “On a warm summer’s evening, on a train bound for nowhere, I met up with a gambler, we were both too tired to sleep….” You remember it, right? I enjoyed the country tune so much that I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I managed to convince my best friend at the time that he and I should put on a concert for our class, and sing “the Gambler” as a duet. Somewhat reluctantly, he agreed. But he said that he didn’t know the words, and he would need those if we were to perform it. Fair enough. So, that weekend, my Mom spent hours with me, listening to that song on our turntable record-player, over and over, picking up the needle-arm time and time again, trying to get the words right. Finally, after much effort, Mom produced a foolscap sheet with the lyrics lovingly printed out by hand. And I loved her for it.
The next day at school however, things slipped a little sideways. My friend decided that he didn’t want to do the concert after all, and furthermore, the whole thing was a dumb idea. Worse still, he grabbed the sheet of lyrics from my hand and started mocking it in front of the other kids. Before I knew it, Mom’s carefully printed foolscap was ripped in half, balled up, and tossed around in a jeering, jarring game of keep-away.
Well, soon enough a teacher appeared and put an end to the playground spectacle. The paper was torn and dirty, and I was in tears. Under the solemn glare of the teacher, the other kids gave me a reluctant apology. But they didn’t understand: it wasn’t myself I was crying about, it was my mother. She had been so kind to me, so encouraging, and had put so much of her time into my project. And now it felt like she was being mocked, she was being insulted. My guts twisted up inside of me, and I knew that the other kids didn’t need to apologize to me. They needed to say sorry to my Mom.
So what happens when an apology doesn’t go far enough, when it doesn’t make it to the people who may need to hear it? My own story of the failed Kenny Rogers concert is just a tiny blip from a sheltered childhood, but it points to the problem I want to get at: what happens when apology misses the mark?
The Bishop and the Totem Pole
About a decade or so ago, a story was circulating through the Anglican Church of Canada. I can’t verify its truth because I wasn’t there, but it certainly sounds like something that could have happened. The story goes that a bishop from one of the South-East Asian provinces of the Worldwide Anglican Communion was visiting the Canadian church. Part of his tour included seeing some of the great totem poles of the West Coast peoples. It was thought that because this bishop was indigenous to his home country, he would appreciate their cultural and spiritual significance. He looked appraisingly at the totem poles, then turned to his hosts and asked, with great earnestness, why such idolatrous objects had not been hacked and burned to the ground.
Of course, the liberal church group hosting the bishop was horrified by his response. Did he know what he was saying? How could he be so culturally insensitive and spiritually violent? But it only took a little bit of reflection to realize that the good bishop was simply speaking from the standard nineteenth century missionary theology which had been foundational to his church back home. He had internalized perfectly the quasi-biblical narrative which had subdued and oppressed his own people. He had learned early on that his own Indigenous culture, stories, rituals, and worldview were evil, and that his own people’s land spirits and ancestors were nothing but demons in disguise.
This colonial and missionary strategy of demonizing the spirit worlds of Indigenous people has a long and insidious history. Its a complicated history as well, because the First Peoples were never simply passive recipients and victims of the colonial project. Indigenous spiritual leaders took from the missionaries’ message what they perceived to be good medicine, on their own terms. Also, throughout history and around the globe, religion in its myriad forms has been chaplain to both horrendous violence and courageous benevolence. To portray missionaries as unambiguously bad and everyone else as utterly innocent is a less than helpful dualism.
That said, the damaging (and damning) patterns were there. In the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries, as European imperialism made its way around the globe, a powerful missionary narrative set the tone. With many variations, it was a Christianized version of the invasion of Canaan, as portrayed in the biblical books of Joshua and Judges. Indigenous Peoples throughout the world, as well as many religious “others” (Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Taoist, Confucian, etc.) were viewed as the Canaanites, with their hideous and sorcerous rites, their high places, their sacred trees and poles, their wicked spirits, their rampant sexual immorality, and their demonic gods and (gasp!) goddesses. These were the idolatrous heathen, who must be dispossessed of their land (and often their lives) to make way for the chosen people of God. The entrance into the “Promised Land” proved to be a nightmare for colonized people around the world.
Contemporary mainline churches in Canada have largely grown beyond that narrative, and are theologically critical of the toxic nature of colonialism. But even so, I still frequently encounter this language of demonization among more conservative and fundamentalist believers. Sadly, I hear it internalized among some Indigenous Christians as well. When Traditional elders and knowledge-keepers and ceremonialists speak of “the ancestors” and “the spirits”, hackles still go up among conservatives of all Christian denominational traditions. There is still a deep rooted suspicion of demons and deception.
In their own way, liberal Christians are scarcely better in their response. Moderate Christian theology no longer accuses Indigenous spirituality of being demonic, but neither does it have any way of positively understanding a spirit-filled worldview. The mechanistic rationality of Euro-based liberal culture simply has no categories other than “myth” or “superstition” or “cultural artifact” when it comes to the rich and complex Indigenous reports of the spirit world. This cultural deficit on the part of liberal Christianity has resulted in a yawning gap in the conversation, an awkward silence in the dialogue which occurs between practitioners of Traditional Indigenous spirituality and those of Christianity. Theological misunderstanding is better than demonization, but it leaves us far from the promised land of interfaith dialogue and mutual respect.
Interlude: The Druid Scratches His Head
For the past decade, my own spiritual path has been one of thealogical translation and bi-spirituality. I am an ordained Christian priest with almost twenty years of ministry experience under my belt, including teaching theology and training new ministers. I am also a Druid, a chaplain to the more-than-human creation, drawing on the deep wells of my ancestors’ pre-Christian Celtic and Anglo-Saxon religious culture and practice. So I know more than a little bit about interfaith encounter. As a person who experiences what the scholars call “multiple religious belonging”, I am very aware of what it is like to be stretched between two worlds, and fully understood by neither. Because I practice a Druidic spirituality, I have been demonized, ridiculed, and marginalized, both online and in the real world of church life (which is also my professional world). However, this small taste of religious suspicion is nothing compared to the all-out assault (spiritual, political, and often physical) which has been experienced by Indigenous folks historically and even now.
As a Christian Druid, I am often deeply perplexed by the inability of most Christian theology to come to terms with the reality of the spirit world. Several years ago I wrote a book called Christian Animism as a first attempt to open the conversation. Other Christian scholars (such as Dr. Mark Wallace and Noel Moules) are also exploring this topic. Our efforts have not yet been appropriated by the wider church, but I am cautiously hopeful that our ideas will eventually take root, and allow Christians a way forward into experiencing and speaking the language of animism. It will help our conversations immeasurably.
Indigenous spiritualities, whether of Turtle Island, Old Europe, Africa, Asia, or elsewhere on the globe, have deep roots in the spirit worlds of the living Earth. Nature spirits and ancestors are almost always identified as vital inhabitants of the unseen realms. Much Indigenous spirituality involves careful attention to relationships with the more-than-human people of the world. Ceremonies, protocols, and other spiritual practices are often undertaken for the sake of maintaining good neighbourliness with all our relations, both seen and unseen.
Within Druidry, both Celtic and Anglo-Saxon (drycraeft), much attention is given to interacting with the wights (persons) of one’s locality, most of whom are not human. For me, this involves daily communion and communication with the lake guardian, the mimikwasis, and the various other wights of our farm. Within this spiritual worldview, it is imperative to learn that these beings are relatives, not resources. This awareness makes all the difference in the world. In my practice, I leave gifts for the spirits, and I listen carefully for the echoes of their voices on the wind. For me, they are simply part of the community, and deserve the same respect and mutual care as any human person does. In fact, without the nature spirits and the ancestors, the land would be essentially dead, drained of its vitality and fecundity. By the grace of the Creator, the spirit world roots and nurtures the inner life of the whole created order.
My Christian Druid animist practices are done as a settler. I pay close attention to what my Nehiyawak and Metis neighbours say and do, but I don’t try to copy or borrow their practices unless I have express permission to do so. As a Christian settler I feel that it is up to me to dig deeply into my own ancestral culture(s) to find tools for this way of life. Doing this spiritual and cultural work, and doing it as a Christian Druid, will hopefully make me a better dialogue partner for my Indigenous neighbours, especially as we find ways to live together as children of the Creator, and as Treaty People.
Treaties as Spiritual Beings
It was almost twenty-five years ago that I found myself in a small inner-city Saskatoon apartment, offering a hand-rolled cigarette to the wizened elder on the sofa beside me. Smith Atimoyoo was an amazing person. An elder of Little Pine First Nation, Smith was a teacher and an Anglican minister. He was foundational to such significant institutions as Wanuskewin Heritage Park, the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, and the Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre. He was also a rodeo rider to boot! One of the things that Smith would often talk about was the Sacred Stem. This was the pipe stem used in ceremony during the signing of Treaty 6 at Fort Carlton in 1876. The way Smith talked about it, the Sacred Stem seemed a bit like the Holy Grail. It wasn’t clear to me whether it was an actual physical artifact, or a spiritual reality. Smith spoke of a small group of elders, scattered throughout the prairies, who were the guardians of the Stem. He wanted to go on a road trip to connect with the other guardians, and he asked me to accompany him. Being young and unaware of the deep significance of this quest, I turned the offer down. It is a decision I regret to this day, and the thought of the Sacred Stem and its guardian elders continues to haunt me.
It was through Smith’s teachings that I first became aware that the Treaties are not just legal and economic documents, but living spiritual beings. This was confirmed for me by my friend Ethel Ahenakew of Sandy Lake First Nation, who was also co-director with me at Saskatoon Native Ministry. Ethel was one of the first people I knew who started talking about us all being “Treaty People”. This was a new concept for me, but it made a lot of sense. And being very cognizant of the spiritual power of “covenant”, in the biblical sense of the word, it began to occur to me that Treaty renewal was something which had very deep spiritual roots. Settlers tend to view the Treaties in a limited and forensic sense. But in truth, the Treaties are spiritual realities first and foremost. Over the decades, it has become clear to me that for true reconciliation to happen, certain events need to take place in the spirit world. Right now, life on the prairies is like the wasteland of Logres under the wounded Fisher King. We need the healing powers of the Holy Grail. Or, in our case, we need the Sacred Stem and the Renewal of the Treaty Covenant. Until that renewal happens on a deep spiritual level, I expect that our relationships will continue to flounder, and our efforts at reconciliation will fall flat.
My People is the Enemy
When missionaries from Rome first came,via Canterbury, to the chieftains of my people in the sixth and seventh centuries with Word of the Gospel, we Anglo-Saxons asked them a very specific question. If we accepted the Lordship of Christ, would our ancestors be in heaven with us when we died? The question gave the missionaries pause; they couldn’t be certain of the soteriological status of our beloved dead, but neither did they want to jeopardize their mission by giving the wrong answer. So they hedged their bets: those ancestors who were particularly virtuous might have access to the grace of Christ posthumously. This was, in some ways, a daring theological stretch for the Romans, but it allowed our peoples’ leaders to say yes to the Gospel of Jesus without denying our abandoning our ancestors.
These Anglo-Saxon ancestors of mine would later come to be known as the Englisc, those who dwell in Anglo-lond. Or in other words, the English of England. I’ve often wondered why my people have been such brutal and oppressive bullies since those very early years. Whether it was the post-Maximus Britons, the Picts, the Scots, or later the Irish, we Anglo-Saxons always seemed to find someone else to aggravate. After 1066 we took on Norman ways, and increased the military strength of our bullying accordingly. By the time of the so-called “Age of Discovery”, our imperial habits were deeply ingrained, and the invasion and domination of Turtle Island (and much of the globe) was almost inevitable. But why? What has made my people, who are brilliant in so many God-given ways, such a race of oppressors? This question haunts me to the depth of my soul.
I have a few ideas. Some odd theories. They won’t make much sense to those who see history only through the lens of a materialist dialectic, or an economic-political paradigm. But for those who recognize the primacy of the spirit world, I might indeed be onto something. I think it has something to do with our ancestral gods. The Roman missionaries reluctantly found a place in their theology for our righteous pre-Christian ancestors, but they gave no such quarter to the gods of our people. If we were to accept and follow Christ, then Woden, Thunor, Ostara, and all the rest of them would have to go. The missionaries demonized our deities, and forced us to abandon them. But the problem is, the gods of a people never disappear. They are so deeply woven into our culture, language, and collective spirituality that if we deny them, they simply go underground. And there, once demonized, they often become the very things we most deeply fear. They transform into shadows of themselves, and operate as powerful and irrational forces within the cultural unconscious.
So in their centuries of psycho-spiritual incarceration, what has happened to Woden, god of knowledge and war? And to Tew, god of sovereignity and justice? And to Frigga, goddess of the home and hearth? From the dungeons of our spirit world, embittered, repressed, have they fueled our Anglo-Saxon drive for dominance and hegemony at all costs? Even among humans, we know that those who become bullies were once bullied themselves. Might it not be the same among the spirits?
What might have happened had the deities of our people been recognized as the guardian spirits assigned by the Creator to watch over the development of our culture? Would the Incarnate Word of the Gospel have been accepted by our gods and goddesses as the very pre-existent and uncreated Wyrd of God’s Spell? Might they have then taken their rightful places as the Watchers and the Holy Ones of England, in the manner of Tolkien’s Ainur and Valar of Middle Earth (Middangeard)? And if so, might the gentle yoke of Christ have weaned them away from war-making and viking violence, rather than plunging them into the brutal prison-house of our collective unconscious? These of course are speculative questions, unable to be answered by rational analysis alone. But I think, for “Anglo” Christians, these questions may indicate the shape and direction of some of the deep spiritual and cultural work we need to do toward the taming and healing of our disturbing colonial addiction.
Taking the Next Steps Together
Allow me to return for a moment to that thwarted Kenny Rogers concert of my childhood. It is, as I have said, a very small and frivolous example of a much deeper and significant dynamic of human relations. As a little child, bullied that morning by my classmates, I needed an apology to make things right. But I didn’t need it for myself alone; I needed someone to apologize to my mother, whose work and care had been mocked and despoiled. The apology had to extend further.
In our ongoing work of reconciliation here in Turtle Island, sincere and heartfelt apology is a necessary part of what the church and dominant culture need to continue to do. For almost a decade, I was a formal representative of the Anglican Church of Canada at the alternative dispute resolution hearings in my diocese. It was my job, on behalf of the church, to listen to survivors’ stories of the residential schools. I was there to bear witness, and to formally offer apology on behalf of the church for what we had done. At the Saskatoon gathering of the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I was honoured and humbled to sit in the listening tipi, and once again hear the stories of those who had been so deeply hurt by the schools, and by our whole colonial project. I experienced the powerful reality of repentance and apology. I heard very clearly the Calls to Action which followed on from the TRC. But I also felt, as important as these acts of reconciliation are, that something was missing. The church’s apology must extend further.
I contend now, that the church needs to undertake the unprecedented, unheard-of, and almost unimaginable step of apologizing to the gods, the spirits, and the ancestors of the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island.
What would that even look like? It’s very hard to say. I suspect it will take years of theological reflection and debate for the church to come to a place where it can honestly and meaningfully make such an apology. It will take prayerful listening and extensive consultation with Indigenous elders, knowledge-keepers, and ceremonial leaders, both Traditional and Christian. How does a body such as the church apologize to beings of the spirit world? It will have to involve deep prayer, arduous ceremony, and public acknowledgement. It will have to call forth the most sincere humility we have ever experienced. And we will have to do it without denying or dishonouring Christ in the process.
In the Epistle to Jude (1:8), the Apostle warns against the danger of “slandering the Glorious Ones”, which are mysterious spiritual beings. But that is what the church has done. In our colonial missionary zeal, we have slandered the gods and goddesses, the cultural heroes, the nature spirits, the guardians, and the ancestors of almost every people we have encountered. We did it around the globe and we did it right here on Turtle Island. The church has played chaplain to Constantine for 1700 years, and now we are reaping the harvest of destruction. That is why the Treaties are broken, the people are dying, and the land itself languishes under the heavy jackboot of Empire.
But this damning past does not have to be our destiny. “Behold!” says the Creator, “I am doing a new thing. Even now it springs forth – do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19) With humility and apology, the Treaty Covenants can be renewed, and a new future is possible for Mother Earth and all our relations.
In 2016, my son Christopher Sanford Beck wrote a short story set in the future about reconciliation. His story was chosen as one of ten award-winning submissions for the “Imagine a Canada” program of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and recognized by the Governor General. It is published in full at https://education.nctr.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2016-NCTR-IMAGINE-A-CANADA-WEBBOOK.pdf The story involves the return of the Sacred Stem, the renewal of Treaty Six, and the celebration of relationships among Indigenous, settler, and newcomer neighbours. It culminates in a round dance of cosmic proportions:
I watch, enthralled by the recent happening, as an oskapew steps out from the circle. The young man picks up a pouch of tobacco and a wooden box of matches from his feet and takes them to the elders. He then takes the wooden box that the little girl had presented and opens it. Inside are two parts of a pipe – the stem and the bowl. He takes out the bowl and hands it to the elder who holds the Sacred Stem. She puts them together and hands the assembled pipe back to the young man. Continuing with the ceremony, he opens up the pouch of tobacco and fills the pipe bowl. When the bowl is full he hands it back to the elders. The two of them hold it between them and bow their heads in a silent prayer. I see them slowly spin the pipe in a circle, pausing as it lands on each of the four directions. I recognize this ritual from my childhood and allow myself an inward smile. When they have completed their prayers, the pipe is proffered to the young man, who lights the tobacco. The elders then smoke the pipe and seal the vows between the people they represent. As the smoky aroma ascends, we all hope that our prayers can be taken with it to the Creator, to seal our covenant.
Once the elders have finished smoking the pipe, they hand it back to the young man. He takes it, and holding it by the bowl, walks clockwise around the interior edge of the circle. When he has completed his round he takes the pipe back to the elders, who smoke it once more. This procedure is repeated three more times until it has made it around the circle four times. Having completed the ceremony, the pipe is emptied, taken apart, and replaced.
“This ends the Treaty Ceremony, but our work for the coming year has just begun,” the elders say together.
At this, everyone in the assembled crowd break into applause and cheering. I release my daughters’ hands and my family joins in the primal cheer. Somewhere behind us a drum begins to beat. As the noise from the circle recedes, the drum music picks up. Its volume heightens until its beat seems to fill my very soul. It merges with my heartbeat and becomes a part of my being, connecting me to the earth and to everyone around me. As a singer’s voice picks up, everyone in the circle begins to dance in a slow, two step rhythm. Around and around we dance. As the music grows louder we begin to spin faster. Our feet pound the ground beneath us and kick up clouds of dust. The music fills our bodies and souls so much that to dance is all we can do. The beat of the drum, the singer’s voice, and our own rhythmic footfall fill the area and connect us to the earth and each other in a way that no words can.
How important it is for us to move together in this sacred rhythm. How important to hear the treaties reiterated, reconstituted, and reconciled. To publicly agree, as a community, on something that has been our way of life for the past decade. To make a public and personal commitment to each other. To affirm our love for one another. To work to reconcile the damages incurred when white people first colonized the Great North. How important it is for my daughters to hear this, to learn about our history, and to look towards the future. A future which, unlike the future from my childhood, is not just filled with hope for love and understanding, but also for the continued growth of these things. During my childhood we were headed in the right direction. Steps were being taken towards the road of growth. But now, as I think of my daughters and the way they see the world around them, I know that we are finally walking the Good Road together. We already have one foot in the hopes of the past and the dreams for the future. We are already experiencing reconciliation each and every day. We are already experiencing acceptance and understanding each and every day. And we are already experiencing Love each and every day.
Cree legend says that the first people to sign the treaties saw them as much more than a legal document. More even than a promise, commitment, or vow. The treaties were entities in and of themselves. Living, breathing, changing beings that were to be respected and honoured. And as our community danced that day to the beat of the drum, on Treaty Six territory, I did not have to see the young man dressed in traditional clothing that had not been with us when the song began to know that the spirit of the treaty was very much alive and with us that day.
In my heart I know that this is not an empty vision, not an impossible dream. With the grace of the Creator, we can see it happen in our day. May it be so. Blessed be.
Ecumenical Companions of Sophia 