INDEX OF CONTENTS ON THIS PAGE
(Use underlined words to find reports or essays
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION
"War and the Catholic Parish" Elsa Sabath. A detailed and sensitive reflection and study, useful for any working- for- peace group.
DIGNITY OF LIFE
- Open message to Cindy Sheehan standing vigil outside the President's ranch at Crawford, Texas. She is being joined by Pax Christi members.
NATIVE AMERICAN
- Authentic Text of Chief Seattle's Treaty oration 1854
- Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe Story of Discovery, Conflict and Heartache
- 1988 APOLOGY OF THE BISHOPS TO THE NORTHWEST NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES. "A Public declaration to the Tribal Councils and Traditional Spiritual Leaders of the Indian and Eskimo Peoples of the Pacific Northwest": c/o Jewell Praying Wolf James, Lummi.
- "Walking
With Native Peoples" Bob Zeigler, Pax Christi
FOUNDATION FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY IN CENTRAL AMERICA
REMEMBERING THE MURDER OF MARYKNOLL SISTERS IN 1980
REFLECTIONS and ESSAYS ON WAR AND PEACE
- "The Language of defensiveness" - Brenda Bentz. Defensiveness in our personal relationships mirroring our collective defensiveness.
- "Tensions Held in the Heart of Hope" Kathleen Pruitt CSJP. An inspiring reflection on the Gospel teaching of hope in times of despair.
REGIONAL GROUP NEWS
Find out what other Pax Christi groups in the Northwest are doing:
nuclear DISARMAMENT
- "The Bombing of Nagasaki" Gary D. Kohls M.D. (with permission)
TRACKING THE COST OF THE IRAQ WAR
In dollars and reflecting on how they might be otherwise spent:
In deaths:
Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton's homilies
The Peace Pulpit
in National Catholic Reporter's website.
"Instead of trying to bring democracy someplace through an army and through war, we will do it through the way of Jesus, through love, through commitment to other people and through caring about them."
Go to website to join National Catholic Reporter
____________________________
Peace in the Post-Christian Era
By Thomas
Merton
Orbis Books,
165 pp., $16.00
See Reviews page
______________________________________________________
A compelling computer animation by the Union of Concerned Scientists
on the effects of the
the Nuclear Bunker Buster
on an Iraq city.
http://www.ucsusa.org/general/special_features/page.cfm?pageID=1782
Senji Kanaeda and Senji Gilberto
Nipponzan Myohoji Sangha
Organizers of the Hanford to Bangor
Interfaith Peace Walk to Hope
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The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold
Story
60 years ago, on August 9th, 1945, the second of the only two atomic bombs
ever used as instruments of aggressive war (against essentially defenseless
civilian populations) was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by an all-Christian
bomb crew. The well-trained American soldiers were only “doing their
job,” and they did it well.
It had been only 3 days since the first bomb, a uranium bomb, had decimated
Hiroshima on August 6, with chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist
military government and the Emperor had been searching for months for
a way to an honorable end of the war which had exhausted the Japanese
to virtually moribund status. (The only obstacle to surrender had been
the Truman administration’s insistence on unconditional surrender,
which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese regarded as a
deity, would be removed from his figurehead position in Japan – an
intolerable demand for the Japanese.)
The Russian army was advancing across Manchuria with the stated aim of
entering the war against Japan on August 8, so there was an extra incentive
to end the war quickly: the US military command did not want to divide
any spoils or share power after Japan sued for peace.
The US bomber command had spared Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura from the
conventional bombing that had burned to the ground 60+ other major Japanese
cities during the first half of 1945. One of the reasons for targeting
relatively undamaged cities with these new weapons of mass destruction
was scientific: to see what would happen to intact buildings – and
their living inhabitants – when atomic weapons were exploded overhead.
Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress called Bock’s
Car, took off from Tinian Island, with the prayers and blessings of its
Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary target.
(Its plutonium bomb was code-named “Fat Man,” after Winston
Churchill.)
The only field test of a nuclear weapon, blasphemously named “Trinity,”
had occurred just three weeks earlier, on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo,
New Mexico. The molten lavarock that resulted, still found at the site
today, is called trinitite.
With instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock’s
Car arrived at Kokura, which was clouded over. So after circling three
times, looking for a break in the clouds, and using up a tremendous amount
of valuable fuel in the process, it headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.
Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was
it the site of the largest Christian church in the Orient, St. Mary’s
Cathedral, but it also had the largest concentration of baptized Christians
in all of Japan. It was the city where the legendary Jesuit missionary,
Francis Xavier, established a mission church in 1549, a Christian community
which thrived and multiplied for several generations. However, soon after
Xavier’s planting of Christianity in Japan, Portuguese and Spanish
commercial interests began to be accurately perceived by the Japanese
rulers as exploiters, and therefore the religion of the Europeans (Christianity)
and their new Japanese converts became the target of brutal persecutions.
Within 60 years of the start of Xavier’s mission church, it was a
capital crime to be a Christian. The Japanese Christians who refused to
recant of their beliefs suffered ostracism, torture and even crucifixions
similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of Christianity.
After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that
Japanese Christianity had been stamped out.
However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy
of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes,
it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in
Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence, completely unknown
to the government - which immediately started another purge. But because
of international pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki
Christianity came up from the underground. And by 1917, with no help from
the government, the Japanese Christian community built the massive St.
Mary’s Cathedral, in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.
Now it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil, that St. Mary’s
Cathedral was one of the landmarks that the Bock’s Car bombardier
had been briefed on, and looking through his bomb site over Nagasaki that
day, he identified the cathedral and ordered the drop.
At 11:02 am, Nagasaki Christianity was carbonized - then vaporized - in
a scorching, radioactive fireball. And so the persecuted,, vibrant, faithful,
surviving center of Japanese Christianity became ground zero.
And what the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years
of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds. The entire worshipping
community of Nagasaki was wiped out.
The above true (and unwelcome) story should stimulate discussion among
those who claim to be disciples of Jesus. The Catholic chaplain for the
509th Composite Group (the 1500 man Army Air Force group, whose only job
was to successfully deliver the atomic bombs to their targets) was Father
George Zabelka. Several decades after World War II ended, he saw his grave
theological error in religiously legitimating the mass slaughter that
is modern land and air war. He finally recognized that the enemies of
his nation were not the enemies of God, but rather children of God whom
God loved, and whom the followers of Jesus are commanded to also love.
Father Zabelka’s conversion to Christian nonviolence led him to devote
the remaining decades of his life speaking out against violence in any
form, especially the violence of militarism. The Lutheran chaplain, William
Downey, in his counseling of soldiers who were troubled by the immorality
of “the bomb,” later denounced all killing, whether by a single
bullet or by a weapon of mass destruction.
In the important book, Hell, Healing and Resistance, Daniel Hallock talks
about a 1997 Buddhist retreat led by Thich Nhat Hanh that attempted to
deal with the hellish post-war existence of combat-traumatized Vietnam
War veterans. Hallock commented, “Clearly, Buddhism offers something
that cannot be found in institutional Christianity. But then why should
veterans embrace a religion that has blessed the wars that ruined their
souls? It is no wonder they turn to a gentle Buddhist monk to hear what
are, in large part, the truths of Christ.”
As a lifelong Christian, that comment stung, but it was the sting of a
sad and sobering truth. And as a physician who deals with psychologically
traumatized patients every day, I know that it is violence, in all its
myriad of forms, that bruises the human psyche and soul, and that that
trauma is deadly and contagious, and it spreads through the families and
on through the 3rd and 4th generations – unless somebody stops the
domestic violence that military violence breeds.
One of the most difficult “mental illnesses” to treat is combat-induced
posttraumatic stress disorder. In its most severe form it is virtually
incurable. It is also a well-known fact that whereas most Vietnam War
recruits came from churches where they actively practiced their faith,
if they came home with posttraumatic stress disorder, the percentage returning
to the faith community approached zero.
This is a serious spiritual problem for any church that, either by the
active support of its nation’s “glorious” wars or by its
silence on such issues, fails to thoroughly inform its young people about
what the earliest form of Christianity taught about violence: that it
was forbidden to those who wished to follow Jesus.
If a Christian community fails to at least fully inform its confirmands
about the gruesome realities of the war zone before they are forced to
register for potential conscription into the military, it invites the
condemnation that Jesus warned about in Matthew 18:5-6: “And whoever
welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. But if anyone
causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be
better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be
drowned in the depths of the sea.”
The purpose of this essay is to stimulate open and honest discussion (at
least among the followers of Jesus) about the ethics of killing by government,
not from the perspective of national security ethics, not from the perspective
of the military, not from the perspective of (the pre-Christian) eye-for-an-eye
retaliation that Jesus rejected, but from the perspective of the Sermon
on the Mount, the core ethical teachings of Jesus in Matthew 5, 6 and
7.
Out of that discussion, if any are willing to engage in it., should come
answers to those horrible realities that seem to immobilize decent Bible-believing
Christians everywhere: Why are some of us Christians willing to commit
(or support or pay for others to commit) homicidal violence against other
fellow children of a loving, merciful, forgiving God, the God whom Jesus
clearly calls us to imitate? And what can we Christians do, starting now,
to prevent the next war, the next epidemic of combat-induced posttraumatic
stress disorder?
What can we do to prevent the next round of atrocities perpetrated by
baptized Christians: the My Lai Massacre, Auschwitz and the other Nazi
death camps, Dresden, El Mozote, Rwanda, Jonestown, the black church bombings,
the execution of innocent death row inmates, the sanctions against Iraq
that killed 500,000 children during the 1990s, the military annihilation
of Fallujah and much of the rest of Iraq and Afghanistan, the torturing
of innocents at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and many other international
war crimes (albeit unindicted to date) perpetrated by the current “Christian”
administration of the United States. And what is to be done to prevent
the next Nagasaki?
A large portion of the responsibility for the prevention of military atrocities
like Nagasaki lies within the organized Christian churches and whether
or not they soon start teaching and living what the radical nonviolent
Jesus taught and lived – the essence of the motto of the new movement
called Every Church A Peace Church.
The next Nagasaki can be prevented if the churches finally heed Jesus’
call to nonviolence and refuse their government’s call for the bodies
and souls of their sons and daughters.
August 9, 2005, by Gary G. Kohls, MD, Duluth, MN for Every Church A Peace
Church (www.ecapc.org)
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Notes on the Hanford to Bangor/Seattle Interfaith Peace Walk
A single line of 13 walking, drumming and singing as they approached Hanford
Gate.
The welcoming and generous spirits of parish hosts who fed, 'watered' and cheered us on.
Drumming through city streets.
Banner carriers walking for miles under the hot sun, their banners hung around their necks like happy oxen.
______________________________________________________
NATIVE AMERICAN
Ne entlaeshan tsa Wex'liem Sile esqapth
International Gathering of Grandmothers
Giving all who were there their gifts of courage, hope and love for their ancestors and descendants.
___________________________________________________
AUTHENTIC TEXT OF CHIEF SEATTLE'S TREATY ORATION 1854
There is a great deal of controversy surrounding Chief Seattle's speech
of 1854. There are many sources of information, various versions of the
speech, and debates over its very existence. Please see the links at the
end of the speech.
Version 1 (below) appeared in the Seattle Sunday Star on Oct. 29, 1887,
in a column by Dr. Henry A. Smith.
One Version
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries
untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today
is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the
stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington
can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the
sun or the seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington
sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for
we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are
many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are
few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. The great,
and I presume -- good, White Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy
our land but is willing to allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed
appears just, even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that
he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, as we are no longer
in need of an extensive country.
There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled
sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away
with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will
not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface
brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.
Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary
wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their
hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our
old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been.
Thus it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward.
But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would
have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is considered
gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home
in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.
Our good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father as well
as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north--our
great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires
he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall
of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so
that our ancient enemies far to the northward -- the Haidas and Tsimshians
-- will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men. Then in reality
he will be our father and we his children. But can that ever be? Your
God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds
his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by
the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red
children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also
to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day.
Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly
receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love
our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look
nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become
our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning
greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial, for
He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you laws but
had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once filled
this vast continent as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct
races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in
common between us.
To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is
hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and
seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone
by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man
could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion is the traditions
of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours
of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and
is written in the hearts of our people.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as
they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They
are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful
world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring
rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined
lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely
hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit,
guide, console, and comfort them.
Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach
of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun. However,
your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it
and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell
apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the
words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.
It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not
be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of
hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance.
Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear
the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to
meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps
of the hunter.
A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of
the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy
homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves
of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should
I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation
follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature,
and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will
surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him
as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may
be brothers after all. We will see.
We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know.
But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will
not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time
the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Every part of this
soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley,
every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in
days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as
the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of
stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust
upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than
yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare
feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond
mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who
lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber
solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when
the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall
have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the
invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves
alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence
of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there
is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities
and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng
with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful
land. The White Man will never be alone.
Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless.
Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.
More sources of information:
* http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/spring_1985_chief_seattle.html
Detailed research calling into question the very existence of the speech,
based on the Bureau of Indian Affairs records at the National Archives,
by Jerry L. Clark.
* http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2344/chiefs3.htm
Research by Per-Olof Johansson in Denmark
* http://www.webcom.com/duane/seattle.html
"Chief Seattle's Thoughts" - two versions of the speech, by
Duane Bristow
_____________________________________________________
ONE TRIBE'S STORY OF DISCOVERY, CONFLICT AND HEARTACHE
By Frances G. Charles, Tribal Chairperson
My name is Frances Charles. I'm the Tribal Chairwoman for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe. We are known as "The Strong People" in our community here. I'd like to take this opportunity to express, in my own words, what we are faced with, and what we are dealing with spiritually, mentally and physically for what is known as the Tse-whit-zen village site in the Port Angeles harbor area, which was known to us to be one of our bigger cemeteries and also a big, big village.
What has been really disturbing for our community is the excavation process and the burials that we have been finding for over a year now. It was not until late August of 2003 that we received a phone call from the Washington State Department of Transportation, which I will call "WashDOT."
In their process of planning to replace part of the Hood Canal Bridge, there was no notification to the Lower Elwha Klallam peoples regarding to this project starting. What was very alarming in the earlier stages of the project was that not only were we not notified officially, but we also received messages from our neighboring tribe, the Makahs, that they had been consulted when WashDOT had earlier considered building the graving dock project in Makah territory but, because of the road conditions and the distant location, they chose not to have it done in Makah lands.
We researched back through the years, studying old newspapers and asking questions about why the Klallam people were not notified. We found that WashDOT thought they had notified the Klallams by talking with the Port Gamble Tribe. Again - Lower Elwha was not notified through this whole process, through the duration of the planning for the graving yard project, or when they broke ground here in Port Angeles. It was not until late August of 2003 that WashDOT team member called and said there was something a "little bit different" in the grounds that they were digging at, so they called the tribe to let us know.
What they had found was a shell midden. Shell midden deposits are what we would describe today as kind of a garbage bin, where we dispose of our food goods, so a midden contains the remnants of the food that we had ate at those times. It was a late Friday afternoon, so we came down the following Monday and observed what was being conducted on the 22.5 acres of this project land, which is known to us as Tse-whit-zen village site.
We started questioning Western Shore Heritage Services, the archeological
firm contracted by the state, to find out what was happening and what
type of testing was going on. We did not know the laws that applied to
burial processes, and in the earlier stages no burials were discovered
- not until September. As we continued to ask questions about the project,
and why we were not notified in advance, we continued to be ignored.
Finally, we started exploring the land ourselves and observed that there was bone that was laying on top of the surface that was being weathered and bleached. We determined, after having them processed to make sure that they were not that of elk or deer that, yes, in fact they were human remains - not animal. It was always being indicated to the tribe that they were animal - something that was dragged in, or where somebody had discarded the carcasses of their deer. It was determined to be, in fact, one of our ancestors.
We asked WashDOT Secretary MacDonald to take a closer observation of what was taking place, and to do some test pits so that we were comfortable with what was being found on the grounds. In recognition of what had taken place, they finally agreed to do a test trench, and at that time there was nothing that was exposed, so the construction quickly continued in what we know as Area A, and Areas B, C and D.
And now we also have Area E, which started exposing several remains at a later time. Up to this date, throughout the duration of the project, we now have over 200 fully intact individuals and over 700 "isolates" - bits and pieces of our ancestral remains, and over 5,000 artifacts and still counting.
We started the mitigation process of a MOA (Memorandum of Agreement) with agencies - the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), and the WashDOT agencies with collaboration of the tribe and, of course, the city of Port Angeles. The Port of Port Angeles was involved in some of those discussions, but sat on the sidelines because we were talking about their land as well as our land.
In the mitigation process, the tribe was under the assumption that we were dealing with 25 individuals of our ancestral remains as we continued with the negotiations. The project had stopped in September, but it took six months to go through the process of negotiations, and during that process we found more remains.
Western Shore Heritage Services was cooperating with the tribe and had hired some of the tribal members through the mitigation/negotiation process. That's one of the things that we wanted to see happen. We wanted tribal people to be employed on the project, which would also serve as a learning tool for them so we will have the capability to deal with such things in the future, because we know that this will not be the only village site in the harbor of Port Angeles and the surrounding area.
As we continued through the mitigation process, we agreed on a figure of $3.4 million the priority of land acquisition for the reburial process, and for the consultants that the tribe needed to hire. We had explained that we were really concerned about the details - that there was so much that was unknown on this land because of its history. The knowledge that our elders and what was explained to them in their childhood years was that this was a big cemetery, as well as one of the bigger village sites of our Klallam people.
We tried to express this time and time again with the agencies, but their goal was to get the project going, to get the bridge done. It was a safety factor, they told us, and it's this safety issue is still being imposed on use today as we speak. Once we started with the negotiations to let the construction continue, as we worked through it with the construction, we brought on LAAS - Lynn Larson's firm - which was our consultant at the very beginning. It was under the advice of the tribe that LAAS was contracted so that we would have a comfort zone. We wanted to work with her because she knew - we thought - what the concerns of the tribe were regarding the priority we placed on our ancestral remains.
Once the contract was signed with WashDOT and LAAS's firm, Lynn Larson's
firm, things changed. We lost the authority and the power to have Lynn
give us the clear direction and advice that we felt we needed regarding
the cultural sensitivities of the land as well as the reburial and the
excavation process of our ancestors. She was now being controlled by the
other agency with whom we were involved in sensitive negotiations, dispute
resolution processes relating to how things were being conducted construction-wise
on the site.
Western Shore continued with their task on the far west side of the project lands, where every day we were continuing to expose more burials. We had, at that time, the 25 individuals that we started off with, and every day we continued adding to the numbers at that burial site. We had a total of 103 burials that had come out of the area that was now called Area E.
The agencies thought that area to be the boundary of a cemetery. The reality is that in Indian country in times past, there was no boundary of a cemetery. They see the boundaries of the cemeteries as they exist today in the non-Native style that you see as you drive down the freeways, or as you drive on country roads - a fenced-in lot that is the enclosure of a cemetery. In our ancestors' times, there were no boundaries. We know this because today we are witnessing it, and what we are observing is that the cemeteries and the burials are going all the way across the 22 acres.
To the east of Area E, we have over 60 fully intact individuals that have been excavated out of the ground along portion of the land. As we continue on to the east side, every day we are finding more burials. We are also finding isolates. We have found isolates - which means the bits and pieces of our ancestors - throughout the whole 22 acres. In the small portions of the site that are being broken down into grids and blocks for more intensive research, we continue to find artifacts, and we continue to find the burials as well.
We have beautiful artifacts that have been excavated out of some of the burials, as well as on some of the lands that we have requested to explore in detail so that we can go in and recover our ancestral remains. I wish this upon no other nation. I wish that the construction would come to a halt in these undisturbed areas that we want to have explored in more detail, because once the overburden is pulled off and the dirt below it is exposed, we are finding our ancestral burials about two to three feet below that hard surface, which to the society surrounding us is known as "disturbed soils."
All of the land is disturbed because since the early 1900's mills have been built down here time and time again, and they had disturbed soils, and had mixed it up. But after we went down six feet below the surface, that's where we hit our ancestors, and that's where we hit the village site.
We have six longhouse structures and a ceremonial house, including a spitting rock still in place at one end. We have flakes of cedar planks that still exist that are now exposed on the ground. We're trying to figure out a way to preserve them, because once we've excavated it out of the soils, it just crumbles and falls apart, so we need to come up with a formula to work with to be able to be able to preserve these cedar planks, which document the existence of our longhouses.
We have the features that are embedded in the sterile sands that identify longhouse planks, longhouse posts, and dividers of spaces where our ancestors used to cook and feast inside these longhouses. Divider walls that were inside these longhouses are being mapped out today to give us a visual view on paper of what our longhouses looked like. The size of this village site itself remains unknown, since it continues on to the adjacent land to the east. We know that our longhouses are bigger than we have imagined - 50 ft. to 100 ft. or even more than that, because we have not found the end of one yet.
We have found whale out here on which our ancestors had feasted. We have found all kinds of trade materials from ivory to Chinese coins, which our medicine men in those times took in trade for services that they may have provided to those that went by in the ships that came to the harbor areas here. We have recently - just today, which is November the 10th - discovered a cedar basket piece. We're not too sure of the location because it came out of a big dirt pile that was sorted using the water and mechanical screening process.
That which normally can take up to 5-10 years, we are being asked to do
in months. That is the frustrating aspect that we're looking at, because
we are asked to do this in a much, much shorter time frame than anyone
else has been asked to do so that the construction of this bridge can
continue.
It's hard to view our loved ones that we're faced with. We have discovered them on metal pipes and under or adjacent to them, in such a condition that it is clear that they had been used as backfill in the 1900's. This is very disturbing to our community, and very disturbing to the workers as well as the non-Natives.
We have seen and witnessed pilings that are used for holding up the mills. These poles that have been driven right through our ancestors' remains and have split them in half. When these poles were driven down into the soil, the remains were driven down as deep as these poles that held up the mills.
We have found mothers and children that were embraced together. We have found husbands and wives that were lying next to each other. We have families who have been found in their final resting places where they were basically stacked on top of each other - the probable cause may be due to smallpox.
We have children and infants who have been laid to rest in contaminated soil where they are being excavated today. Sometimes it has taken up to two weeks to take them out of the ground because of the contaminated soils that we're faced with out here, and we are witnessing the process of our workers trying to take their time and we worry about their safety because of the contaminated soils that we're faced with.
We have witnessed two sets of sea otters that have been used for ceremonials. They were placed properly and placed together, with the harpoon was still lodged in the spines of both of these otters, and we witnessed the beauty and the nature and the caring that was taken in the burial of these otters.
It's been really heart aching because our tribal members have children of their own. When they are excavating their children that are out here on the ground, they think of their own children and they think of their own families. And it has changed so many lives, because this is a drug and alcohol free environment that we promote, and it has changed them in so many ways. A lot of them have cleaned up, and a lot of them have sobered up, and a lot of them have gone to counseling to help themselves with the healing process of not using anymore.
We work with our people. We promote education and are flexible with those who are attending college. We work with them so that they can come in at later times or earlier times. One of the things that is really on positive side for this is that it's changed a lot of our youth. It's changed a lot of our adults, too, and our elders that have been out here on the ground. But yet it's still hard for them to witness and to visualize what they're seeing and the conditions of their loved ones.
We don't blame the society of today. We blame the society before the laws that were applied that protect burials. But the frustration that we're faced with is that even thought there are laws now, they are not working, and they're not being followed - they're always being broken.
And promises are still being made, but these promises are being broken, such as the refusal to sell us the land that we started negotiating on for the reburial of our ancestors. One piece of advice I would offer to any of the tribes out there is to make sure that you have everything in place that you can think of - everything imaginable - to make sure that you have all promises documented, that you have agreements signed off by all agencies and all of your surrounding local governments before you sign on that dotted line.
I mention this due to the fact that the city of Port Angeles and some other local governments in the Port Angeles area had promised us that they would work with us for land acquisition for the reburial process for our over 200 cedar boxes that are hand-made by our tribal members. And now they are sitting in an undisclosed location. They are on racks, and they are patiently waiting for a land destination so that they know, once again, it is their final resting place. They are sitting there waiting as we are waiting.
We thought we had an agreement, but again it was broken because the agencies
felt that this land next to us here was not a place to have an Indian
cemetery, because it did not fit the scope of their "economics"
for an industrial land base. What was implied to us earlier that we would
negotiate and we would purchase the land for the burial process and for
the curating of the artifacts, and for the development of a cultural center
to continue to educate the surrounding county and the visitors who come
into Port Angeles area.
We want to educate them about who we are and what we're about. We are still believed to be living in teepees, the elementary school has said, and they want to come down to the reservation to see the teepees that our kids live in. That is the society that is still taking place up there, and we are the ones who need to change that attitude and the morale of what they are being taught at their home base.
The children that we have to raise are going to have to live with this and we, as council members, and we as a community have to live within ourselves to try to teach and to tell the stories of what happened on the Tse-Whit-Zen village site, and of the mistakes that we have made early on by listening to the non-Natives out there whose promises that were, once again, broken, while their words of wisdom to us were, "We will help you as long as you help us."
And we are asked to make the economics of the Clallam County/Port Angeles area our priority - to save a bridge that has deteriorated through the course of the years due to natural forces - not listening to what mother earth herself wants, but going back into the "reality" of the non-native society and trying to reconstruct this bridge. Maybe it doesn't belong there, but that is not for us to judge at this point in time.
But this version of reality is the one that we're faced with. And it's tearing our community apart in heart, the way we have to witness the visions of how our ancestors are being treated, and the disrespect that is shown by the construction that continues at the site and the village itself.
I have no words that can express how I truly feel about the decisions that we've made as council, being forced to decide based not on what we knew, but what we assumed until we actually had the facts, because that was what was always demanded of us: "Give us the facts before we'll make a decision. We will not stop this process until you give us the facts that you know for sure."
And, in return, we asked the agencies to give us the facts that they know - that there are no burials here. And yet we're still in a dispute, while we should have been out there digging and looking for these ancestral remains - not sitting there waiting for a response to letters that continues on as a delay - a stalling tactic that the agencies use - and then they tell us that we're out of time to be able to go out there and explore.
They tell us that it's a safety factor that we are faced with - that there is a war going on out there, and that the submarines have to continue to pass through that Hood Canal Bridge, and that if the submarines can't get through there, then they cannot protect the United States from what is taking place out there, and that we will be to blame. These are things that are being said to our community, to our council, when we have our meetings with the agencies. We are being threatened and threatened, and we informed them of our last meeting that we are beyond being threatened any more.
Native Americans need to stand up in unity to help one another, because we wish this upon no other nations out there.
Again, we are gratified that we are able to come back and look at some of the artifacts that are coming up in this digging, because it is helping us in our healing process; but not for the healing of what we are seeing with our ancestral remain, which are continuing to be counted day by day, and of the village itself, which is being wiped out minute by minute, second by second, day by day, month by month.
There is no more village in existence, no trace of the cedar houses that were there three weeks ago. Every day as we sit here and witness and watch, our existence is being wiped out by the construction that is taking place, and it's frustrating for us, because we would like to see it stop, or at least slow down, so that we could go out there and recover our ancestors.
We don't want them to be embedded under concrete floors, or having thousands
and thousands of pounds of water lying on top of them. It's a dispute
that we continue to argue - the adverse effect that the construction will
have on the burials. Take a look at the societies around us. This would
not happen to a non-Native cemetery, but it's OK for it to happen to an
Indian cemetery.
Again, we're asked to give and give and, again, they're always taking. But we feel that we have given enough, and we gave a lot more than what was ever anticipated, but yet they're still asking us to give more. I feel that we cannot give any more, and that we all need to take a stand and tell them that they need to slow the project down so that we can recover our ancestors. We are now into the hundreds, and we are into the thousands of the artifacts out there, and yet we continue to count.
So, we ask for your support. Call your Congressmen. Call your Senators. Write to the advisory council and let them know that there are laws that should apply. There is an agreement that was signed, but that agreement was signed based upon the remains of 25 individuals being found. It was not signed for what we are seeing today. There should be something that comes in and halts the timeframe of this agreement so that we can go in there and carry out the recovery process that's so clearly needed.
The $3 million was not hush money. It is money to acquire more land for the reburial process of our ancestors. It is not hush money to keep us quiet, which is something that is always being indicated out there in the non-Native society, who say that our people have taken our money, so why are we complaining about it now?
Money is not what it's about, because their $254 million project could not pay for the pain and the anger and the resentment that our people have gone through. It could not pay for having our elders go back and relive what they want to forget, and what they have buried deep in their hearts and their minds that they don't want to bring back up and think about again.
But now we have to go back and ask them to dig really deep down and talk about these pains and the anger that they were raised up to try to forget, and to witness about how they were raised and the times that they remember about their parents and their grandparents. And it's hard to go do that. It's something that is challenging for us, but we're willing to take that chance on talking with our elders again, and having them try to relive their anguish over what they wanted to forget about that happened so many years ago.
So, once again, I ask for the support of all of the Tribal Councils. Please take the opportunity to come down to the land, because the land itself is very powerful. It is sacred, it is ceremonial, and it has a lot of strong powers. O nce you walk the grounds down here, you'll have an understanding of what our people are going through and what the workers are going through.
We are grateful to those who take the care and the nurturing of our ancestors, and the respect that they have, and the time that they are taking to recover them and properly place them into the cedar boxes that they have now. We respect those that understand. Once they've walked here and had the opportunity to talk to us face-to-face, to truly understand in our heart where we're coming from, that we are deeply sorrowed for how we are being resented in many other ways out there in the surrounding communities that have no understanding of what our people, and our youth, are going through down here.
We are trying to protect our children and their children, so that nothing like this ever happens again to any of the other nations out there. If you have any questions, please feel free to call us, and come down and look at the grounds, and walk the grounds, because we don't want this to happen to any other nations out there. We are more than free to come over and do a Power Point presentation - but it's more powerful if you come down to Tse-whit-zen village site yourself.
We are gratified by those who want to share their songs with us, and share the songs that they feel belong back on this site, as well as sharing the stories of what they recall and what they were told. We are gratified for that to happen, because it's a healing process for all of us, and we're grateful in many ways.
Our words cannot express the wisdom of those that come down here and help
us in the spiritual parts of the morale of our people, for the sorrow
that they're carrying - to uplift them, and help them in the day-to-day
functions that they're working with down here. There is no piece of paper
that can express the job description that they are working with down here,
because these grounds are very sacred.
I have to give my hands up to all our workers down here, because it's something that they carry home every day, and it's a memory that they'll never ever forget in their lifetime until they, themselves, are buried into mother earth to go back beyond to where they were created, too.
So, again, I thank you for your time, and thank you all for listening to the concerns that we as Elwha people have - we who are known as "The Strong People."
And we continue on with our canoe journeys, and we want to gather and rejoice for what has taken place here so that, at the end, we are all happy and we can all be united. So, Hay-aht-sin, and I thank you for the time in giving me this opportunity to speak. And, once again, I really encourage you to visit the site and I say again, Thank you.
Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe
2851 Lower Elwha Road
Port Angeles, WA 98363
telephone: (360) 452-8471
email: tse-whit-zen-info@elwha.nsn.us
FOUNDATION FOR SELF-SUFFICIENCY IN CENTRAL AMERICA
"Foundation for Self-Sufficiency in Central America (FSSCA) - NGO in Round Rock, Texas and San Salvador;
3 Staff: Jose “Chencho” Alas, director, Sean Hale, assistant, and Anabella Mejia, representative.
They obtain technical assistance and grants for peasant-led projects in rural El Salvador that have an environmental component or meet a crisis need. Projects include: conflict resolution training, youth gang mediation and youth projects, organic farming with hoe and machete and drip irrigation, chicken project, mangrove restoration, reforestation, self-composting toilets, new efficient wood burning stoves, delegations from the US in July. New project is Mesoamerica Peace Project that brings people from different cultures and religions together to reflect and discuss their world view and define commonalities in series of 8 retreats to become peacemakers. The result would be a network for peacemakers in North and Central America to challenge and find alternatives to globalization. Staff and office funded through contributions. Projects funded through contributions and largely from grant sources.
Report by Bob Zeigler, Pax Christi
For information see web page: http://www.fssca.net
______________________________________________
conscientious Objection
"WAR AND THE CATHOLIC
PARISH" Elsa Sabath
To read and download go to
http://elsa.sabath.net/wp-content/War_and_the_Catholic_Parish.pdg
JUSTICE AND HEALING FOR WOMEN WHO ARE VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE
BE AWARE OF "ON THE WINGS OF A DOVE" PROJECT
__________________________________________________
DIGNITY OF LIFE
Although we cannot be with you physically, our hearts and prayers are with you. One of us had a son in Iraq. Like you, he struggled, as did his family, to find the heart of this war. You remind us of the dignity each life has; you remind us of the power of one mother's love and courage; you remind us of the power of ONE."
Deep peace to you.
Pax Christi Pacific NW
GLOBAL WARMING
An issue that reminds us we, here in the northwest, have an effect on the rest of the world.
Study facts on air, water and soil pollution in your region.
Support organic farmers in your area by buying their food.
Become an advocate for government aid to organic farmers; for prevention of toxic chemicals being introduced into the air you breathe, the lake or stream near you, the soil which feeds your food.
Reflect on how this is also a social justice issue. The poor often have no time to do this advocacy work nor the money to buy organic food.
The last 4 items are discussed on http://www.ucsusa.org (Union of Concerned Scientists)
Back to
REFLECTIONS, ESSAYS
ON THE DEATH OF FR. ROGER AT TAIZE
Friend,
I have something I want to shout from the rooftops. Perhaps you've heard
about it in the news already. I don't know how fast it travels.
The news: Tuesday evening during the evening prayer, Brother Roger's throat
was cut by a crazy woman. He died within minutes. Two dozen children were
sitting with him, tens of young people very nearby, his brothers and the
two thousand plus in the church saw, heard, have been deeply affected.
(See
the news release on the Taize website.)
The Good News:
After the first two minutes of panic and chaos, the prayer continued.
We
sang even as eight of the brothers bore Brother Roger out of the church
on
their shoulders. Then, as is the case in each evening prayer, the gospel
was read. Friend, it was the Beatitudes. They were read in eight different
languages. And the text was chosen a month in advance! We continued in
song. There was the great silence. All you could hear was the distinct
sound of European sirens. A Kyrie. A song. A brief pause where normally
Brother Roger would have said something. Another song. An uncharacteristic
pause. An older brother took the microphone and informed us the Brother
Roger had died. That we should continue to pray and sing, to stay in the
church and support those who were affected. And we stayed. Even two hours
later, there were still 500 people in the church. Singing, praying. Then
the bells started to toll. It was about one in the morning. People
returned to the church. We began another common prayer. A song. A Bible
text. A Brother walked up to the makeshift ambo that stood directly in
front of the area that had been cordoned off by the police. The forensic
police were taking measurements there, comparing notes. The Brother read
-
the Beatitudes. Blessed are the meek...Blessed are the poor in
heart...Blessed are those who thirst for righteousness...Blessed are the
peacemakers..Blessed are you when people revile you, persecute you...even
so they persecuted those who came before you. The Beatitudes in French.
In
English. In German. A song. A silence. An older brother takes the
microphone. And in a strong, clear, voice full of conviction says - Costly
in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his loved ones. We don't
understand. We all are experiencing how costly it is. Remember something
Brother Roger repeated often: God loves everyone, yes everyone, without
exception. Costly in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his loved ones.
We are thankful for the witness of Brother Roger, thankful for the way
he
has opened for us. Translations. A song. The Brothers leave the church
again. The prayer continues. The bells rang for the morning prayer at
8:15
as usual. A song. A Psalm - Look to God and your face will shine, all
bitterness gone. A Bible text CHOSEN A MONTH IN ADVANCE - There shall
be
violence no more in your land. You will have no need of the sun by day
or
the moon by night, for God will be your light... (Is 60: 18-20). A song.
Silence. Brother Alois, the new prior takes the microphone: We entrust
Brother Roger to you O God - that he is seeing the unknown. May we welcome
and transmit a ray of your brightness that is your love, even as Brother
Roger did. Songs. In a Bible study later in the morning, a Brother says:
The first thing the risen Christ said to his disciples - Peace be with
you.
You need not fear death anymore. Peace be with you. The Brother says,
if I
go forward it is not out of my own strength - I am weak and poor - it
is
because He is calling me, calling me to faithfulness, to fidelity, to
continue. So I continue. The community continues. We ask you to continue.
Friend, the welcome continues. People still come. More and more. No
random searches. No fortress Taize. The children still sit in the back,
with the brothers. A Sister said, I notice two things. Taize is not an
idyllic place, no it is just as we are in our brokenness. This will push
us to reaffirm our faith, to live what we say we believe. There is hope
here. A profound sadness. A work of reconciliation, "a pilgrimage
of
trust on earth" that continues.
This is what I want to shout from the rooftops. Please share this with
others.
In the communion of prayer.
From a friend in the Taize Community
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THE LANGUAGE OF DEFENSIVENESS
Brenda Bentz
Studying the news as reported in London and Baghdad and East Jerusalem today pulls me into my own work with couples. Sitting in my green chair across from a client or reading the Internet, I think I hear the same language. See the same responses.
The language of defensiveness is one we all speak. And we are all expert in the defensive language of those closest to us, but only with honest hard work able to hear our own. We become the most defensive with those who could hurt us, those most intimate – or those most unknown. The lover and the stranger arouse our deepest fears.
Today in London we read about Web accounts where those claiming responsibility for the bombings call us the “Zionist crusaders”. Europeans who go to their land to attack them or occupy their land. Is their truth to that? President Bush claims that "On the one hand, you have people working to alleviate poverty and rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS and ways to have a clean environment, and on the other hand, you have people working to kill other people." Ignoring the fact that our own budget is heavily skewed to killing people.
Sitting in my green chair, I hear “You’re just like your father!” – bringing up old history that will sting, like the word crusaders or Zionist. Or “There’s no point in talking to you. You’re too emotional.” Which is the personal equivalent of “We don’t have to think about why they are attacking us. They are bad guys. They will attack us no matter what we do.”
Defensiveness takes many forms. Denial. Attacks and counterattacks. Explaining. Accusing one’s self. Trying to fix the problem without defining it. Withdrawing. We all do it. Daniel Wile describes levels of attacks in personal relationships.
1) A Level 1 Attack: Criticizing behavior (you never talk to me anymore)
2) A level 2 Attack: Criticizing feelings (you always see the glass half
full)
3) A level 3 Attack: Criticizing Character – name calling (you’re
passive aggressive!)
4) A level 4 Attack: Making Accusatory Interpretations (Don’t blame
me when you are really mad at your boss)
5) A level 5 Attack: Criticizing Intentions (you said that to make me
feel guilty)
They are the ways we behave when we haven’t been heard, when we have something that needs to be heard. If we can’t get it across consistently in an intimate relationship, alienation eventually becomes psychopathology. Digging deeply enough into ourselves to know what it is we haven’t gotten across and then finding the courage to risk saying it without getting defensive is what brings about the moments of intimacy that make a relationship work.
I think there is a political equivalent. Fear generates defensiveness. So does the will to power. President Bush invariably goes straight to a level 5 attack. “They” are the bad guys, who “hate democracy”. A verbal nuclear attack! It is hard to remain in a conversation where one’s intentions are under attack. A counter attack becomes almost inevitable.
We hear the language of the axis of evil, of the infidel, the crusader, all words that escalate our inability to hear each other. Followed with actions of actual physical attack and abuse. Actions that then require us to justify our behavior. That make facing out own defensiveness harder because we have more to be sorry about. On a political level, peace is the relationship we yearn for. And it isn’t any easier to achieve than intimacy.
Our current historical, prejudiced fear of China and their fear of running out of resources is one where our president is escalating the danger of the situation with his defensiveness about their business purchases. Ignoring our shared environmental dilemma. Tony Blair today is adamant that Britain will not be cowed. Backing himself into defending colonialism – once again. We are soldiers fighting a war when we attack you. But if you attack us, you are terrorists. And tonight’s talk shows have too many talking heads claiming it is simply Muslims hating Westerners. Apparently, they are so different from us that policy is irrelevant. All we can do it fight!
It seems to me that beneath the defensive rhetoric, we are involved right now in wars of colonialism and racism, and fear in the face of diminishing resources. We have not faced issues of global competitiveness and lowering wages as the world grows smaller. In our defensiveness - and possessing enormous stockpiles of WMD - we are committing atrocities all over the globe. The only way to peace, if I have learned anything in my green chair, is to discover within ourselves as a nation what it is we desire, and what we fear. And then have the courage to face others with the truths we learn. At the same time, we must learn to listen with open minds and open hearts to the same desires and hopes that lie beneath that defensive behavior of others. Listening sometimes makes it possible for the other – stranger or lover – to reach his or her own deep truth. Sometimes. Not always. But we never get there if our fear of our own vulnerability stops us.
Intimacy and peace are both possible. They remain elusive because of fear. And the irony is that fear begets the thing we fear.
______________________________________________________
TENSIONS HELD IN THE HEART OF HOPE
Kathleen Pruitt, CSJP
'These are the best of times and the worst of
times. … an age of wisdom and an age of foolishness; an epoch of
belief and an epoch of incredulity ….it was the season of light,
it was the darkness … it was the spring of hope and the winter of
despair …" These opening lines of Charles Dickens' A
Tale of Two Cities" describe what well may serve as a modern
context for a similar reading in Ecclesiastes. 'There is an appointed
time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens: a
time to weep and a time to laugh ….. a time to mourn and a time to
dance; a time to seek and a time to lose; there is a time to love and
a time to refrain from loving; a time of war and a time of peace; a time
to be silent and a time to speak'. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)
In many ways, each fits our society, our nation, our churches and our
world today just as in those turbulent times of the French Revolution.
Recall, too, a challenge that Jesus extended to his sometimes less than
courageous followers: When you see a cloud rising in the west, you
say immediately that rain is coming . [sic] if you can interpret the signs
of earth and sky, why can you not interpret the present time? (Luke 12:55-57)
You will hear of wars and rumors of war; nation will rise against nation;
false prophets will arise, leading many astray. Because of the increase
of evil the love will grow cold. (Matthew 24:6 ff) And yet we are
told to proclaim the good news of the kingdom of the kingdom of God! What
might this mean? At this time, in this place we pray for the wind and
fire of a new Pentecost. We pray for the Gift of the Spirit to fill us
with peace, flame us into fire for justice, and transform us into women
and men eager and willing to act justly, to love tenderly, and
to walk humbly with our God. We yearn to make the Good News of
God's care for all people visible with our lives. We believe, in St.
Paul's words, that, the Kingdom of God is justice, peace and joy.
These are times in our nation, our world, and in our churches when it
is easy to become prophets of doom. Violence seems a first response for
resolution of differences, corporate greed robs many of a rightful share
of goods and resources, globalization of war, ethnic hatreds and alienation
of the poor are ever increasing realities, our Earth suffers, groaning
under carelessness, wanton destruction and neglect. Lack of honesty, violation
of integrity, betrayal of trust, exclusivity, structures of silence and
secrecy all too often leave power in the hands of the few. We 'read
the signs of the times' and weep! Knowing we are all part of these
broken and painful times, we weep! Yet it is precisely in times
such as these that we are called to live as people of hope. We believe
with outrageous hope - hope beyond reason, beyond measure -- that the
Spirit of God shines forth through our strength and our frailty! The Spirit
of Truth is given to teach what we need to know; the Spirit of Light shatters
the darkness that covers the earth; the Spirit of Love animates the human
heart; the Spirit of Life calls us to LISTEN, to LOVE, to LIVE, to LABOR.
In short, to be people of hope for the coming of the kingdom of God. What
does this mean? What is required for people of hope to speak of the Kingdom
of God in THIS time, in THIS place? The Gospel call to 'read the signs
of the times' requires people of hope in God's promise to challenge,
to empower, to energize and to enable God's people everywhere. Each of
us needs the endurance to see things as they are and the intuition that
things as they are might one day be transformed into things not yet seen.
To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom of God is to articulate God'svision
of what 'can be'. God's word is at once sharp and incisive, compassionate
and merciful. God's word spoken from discerning hearts will be a word
of power - in Hebrew 'dabar' -- a word that matters. That word startles,
challenges, invites to action. It is both starkly practical and realistic
and creatively imaginative and hope-filled. People of hope
are risk-takers who humbly, persistently call everyone everywhere to an
outrageous hope in the midst of pain and suffering. In the face
of confusion, uncertainty and instability people of hope call us all to
see things differently. In the worst of times they call for the
best of times, assuring those who mourn, those whose tears
run warm, that there is a time to dance. In a time of loss
and in the face of death people of hope call for all to seek new
paths and different ways of doing things. In a time of war they
call for a time of peace. To be people of hope is to be about proclaiming
the kingdom of God. Living in the midst of dynamic tension of St. Paul's
reminder all creation is groaning in pain ….. is to experience
with every fiber of our being, the messiness of the 'winter of despair'
and, and simultaneously, to give voice to a song for the springtime
of hope. It is to live reality of the 'already' and the'not yet' Authentic
hope has three essential elements: critique, lament, and vision.
Critique simply described is 'seeing things as they are' and the
courage and willingness to name what is seen. It gives voice to experiences
of oppression, it addresses abuses that divide and destroy, it names hunger,
homelessness, poverty and despair. Critique decries arrogance and
hatred, and use of 'religion' to divide and separate. Critique
requires people of hope to know clearly when it is 'a time to be silent,
and a time to speak'.
People of hope will also Lament - grieve-- for children lost and
abused; grieve for sins of violence and structures of injustice.
They lament, begging mercy for God's people, suffering death and
destruction. They plead for forgiveness and reconciliation. In
this time, in this place standing in the midst of sin and suffering people
of hope hold, courageously and compassionately, the dynamic tensions,
alive and real this very moment in our nation, our world, and in our churches.
Indeed there is, in this age of wisdom … this age of foolishness,
'a time to weep, a time to mourn, a time of war and a time for
peace'. Even as they lament and grieve people of hope speak
the Good News of the Kingdom of God.
People of hope hold a Vision for as Scripture tells us without
a vision the people perish. In an image used by author Margaret
Wheatley, people of hope are called 'to jump into chaos', seeing
chaos as that within which there is unlimited energy for new life, new
ways of being. Chaos is where the Spirit is present and active
- a fruitful darkness that is also light, if we dare let go. In this searing
light of the Spirit's creative imagination people of hope will be spirit-filled
'shape-shifters', visioning a nation, a world, a church, as bread-bakers
and water carriers, as garment weavers and tent makers, as bridge builders
and menders of broken breaches, as place-setters at a table where all,
sinner and saint alike, are welcome. People of hope call all to be care-full
for earth, to be sowers of seeds, plowing and tending the harvest of justice
and peace. In our time in this place, as people of hope called to read
the signs of the times -- to see and listen, to critique and to lament,
grieving what is. People of hope must also energize and uplift, living
into the vision, straining with all God's holy ones toward that 'future
full of hope' -- a future which is both already here, and is not yet fully
realized.
People of outrageous hope are wonderful so long as they are not noisy, as long as they are quiet observers, as long as they are 'kept in their place'. However, it is precisely in the 'out-of-placeness' that the prophetic word of hope best and most authentically serves society, the churches, and the world. And so, people of hope are called squarely into the messiness of a winter of despair, requiring the endurance to see things as they are' but living into a springtime of hope - God's promise that 'things as they are' will be transformed into things we have not yet seen. Willingness to live this dynamic tension requires much more than endurance. It requires both clarity of vision and acuity of hearing and new ways of seeing. It requires the ability to effectively announce that vision simultaneously to the powers that oppose God's reign and to the people oppressed by those powers. It requires a willingness for people of hope to pay, even with their lives, for the 'coming of the kingdom of God'.
.These are indeed the best of times and the worst of times … a season of light and a season of darkness … a winter of despair… but, even in the midst of the best, the worst, of darkness and despair, for people of hope it must be a springtime of outrageous hope.
(Kathleen Pruitt has been, and continues to be, active internationally, nationally and regionally in the Pax Christi Catholic Peace Movement)
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THE POWER OF APOLOGY
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This is a formal apology on behalf of our churches for their long-standing participation in the destruction of traditional Native American spiritual practices. We call upon our people for recognition of and respect for your traditional ways of life and for protection of your sacred places and ceremonial objects. We have frequently been unconscious and insensitive and not come to your aid when you have been victimized by unjust Federal policies and practice. In many other circumstances we reflected the rampant racism and prejudice of the dominant culture with which we too willingly identified. During this 200th Anniversary year of the United States Constitution we, as leaders of our churches in the Pacific Northwest, extend our apology. We ask for your forgiveness and blessing.
As the Creator continues to renew the earth, the plants, the animals and all living things, we call upon the people of our denominations and fellowships to a commitment of mutual support in your efforts to reclaim and protect the legacy of your own traditional spiritual teachings. To that end we pledge our support and assistance in upholding the American Religious Freedom Act (P.1. 95-134. 1978) and within that legal precedent affirm the following:
(1) The rights of the Native Peoples to practice and participate in traditional ceremonies and rituals with the same protection offered all religions under the Constitution.
(2) Access to and protection of sacred sites and public lands for ceremonial purposes.
(3) The use of religious symbols (feathers, tobacco, sweet grass, bone, etc.) for use in traditional ceremonies and rituals.
The spiritual power of the land and the ancient wisdom of your indigenous religions can be, we believe, great gifts to the Christian churches. We offer our commitment to support you in the righting of previous wrongs: to protect your peoples' efforts to enhance Native spiritual teachings; to encourage the members of our churches to stand in solidarity with you on these important religious issues; to provide advocacy and mediation, when appropriate, for ongoing negotiations with State agencies and Federal officials regarding these matters.
May the promises of this day go on public record with all the congregations of our communions and be communicated to the Native American Peoples of the Pacific Northwest. May the God of Abraham and Sarah, and the Spirit who lives in both the cedar and the Salmon People, be honored and celebrated.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Bishops and other leaders of the Lutheran Church in America,of the American Baptist Churches of the Northwest, of the Northwest Regional Church, of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia, of the Washington North Idaho Conference United Church of Christ, of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle, of the Presbyterian Church Synod Alaska-Northwest, of the United Methodist Church Pacific Northwest Conference.
This apology has raised the awareness of indigenous peoples and others world-wide.
Bob Zeigler, Pax Christi
Walking with Native peoples does not lend itself to clear definition.
There are not lines; there are blends. As a wetland biologist some of
what I see is analogous. For regulatory purposes and deciding where people
can build and where they cannot, people want to find the exact boundary
of the wetland. We have a methodology that allows us to draw a line, but
in reality that line is not there. What exists are transition zones or
ecotones where wetland blends into upland and upland blends into wetland.
We have systems that contain elements that blend into and depend upon
one another. They are not separate.
Also, wetland biologists will try to show the importance of wetlands,
will analyze their functions, what they do. We break the wetlands into
component functional parts. It is a reductionist approach to analysis.
We are able to model on that as a way to describe the wetlands. But an
artist gave me a watercolor, an impressionistic painting of a local wetland
with the mist rising over it. I realized she did a better job of capturing
the wetland in her medium than I was able to do by breaking it down into
its parts. The wetland was much more than just the sum of its parts. I
was not able to capture that, but the artist did.
Native peoples live between two worlds. One world is their culture and
spirituality, and the other is the world of the dominant culture along
with the religious counterculture inside that dominant culture, this counterculture
having great meaning for many of the Native peoples. Sometimes one world
is more dominant and sometimes the other is more dominant. There will
be times when Native peoples need to be closely connected with those of
us who are non-Native, and times when they may need to regroup and not
be as connected to us.
Pax Christi was invited to journey with the Native peoples. That does
not mean that Pax Christi does things for them; it means that we are to
be with them, to be present, to listen and respect them wherever they
are, whatever their needs are, whether they be to talk to us, to be isolated
in an alcohol treatment center or to make a retreat to delve deeper into
Native spirituality.
There is a fair amount written on the ministry of accompaniment which
is what I believe we are doing as Pax Christi members; we are to be present
to oppressed people, listen to and respect them, and assist only in facilitating
their empowerment. It is a catholic ministry - universal in many aspects.
Among Native peoples there are different experiences and interpretations
of Catholicism. Some Native peoples are very deeply Catholic. They are
conservative Catholics, and Catholicism has had great meaning for them.
Others have a love-hate relationship with Catholicism. Some journey through
different religions. Some may be Mormon, or Shaker or Fundamentalist Christian,
or Catholic at different times in their lives. Some are Scione. Some are
a blend of Scione and Catholic. Some see Catholicism as the cause of all
their problems and do not even want a priest on their Reservation. What
we do as Pax Christi people they see as confusing the Native peoples.
Yet there are many who see what we do as helping them find hope;our walking
with them is one of the few consistent elements in their otherwise chaotic
lives. In our work we need to accept people where they are, and listen.
Pax Christi members may move into different areas
for a time: one member is going to Guatemala for a year to learn Spanish
before coming back to work in Immigration Law. Some people will pass on
to another kind of ministry. Some people will pull back, learning that
there are limits to what they can do, such as attending Kateri masses
less frequently because of other calls they must balance with their walk
with Native peoples. But all of us continue to do what we can when we
can.
Some of our Kateri Circle leaders have died, but the group continues.
New Pax Christi members replace those who leave.
But our relationship with Native peoples, whatever form it takes, continues
and will continue. It is the continuity that counts.
PRAYER