Status Updates From Buffalo Shout, Salmon Cry: ...

Slow reading because there’s so much to process, but I’m finding it very insightful.

“Comparisons between the Hebrew people’s dispossession and the past/present story of Turtle Island’s Indigenous people are striking.” (Berry, 280)

“Places are certainly made more sacred when we who inhabit them come to know their stories, and allow them to scar, bless, and transform us.” (Berry, 283)

Some deeply important challenges posed in Part 3 of this work, where we hear voices of challenge and protest. We must listen.

"Imbued with notions of religious paternalism and racial superiority, the 'good Christians' did not seek to dismantle the oppressive systems, institutions, and ways of Christian colonialism, but merely to reform them, making them gentler systems of oppression." (Waziyatiawin, ch 13, pg 213)

“We need to sing the land, to experience it, to be transformed by its power, and so glorify God. We need the Spirit to help us envision imaginative practices that can help us live alternative, more radical lives in balance with creation.” (Chief Lawrence Hart, Southern Cheyenne) pg 161

From Dave Diewert, one of my Regent profs, in chapter 7: “If there is to be a just and true reconciliation with the Indigenous peoples of this land, white Christian settlers must confront Christianity’s role in colonization, past and present.” (129)

“The primeval history of Genesis 1-11...contradicts every key aspect of the ‘salvation story’ of Enlightenment Progress...” (110)

“Can the settlers ever pierce the veils of nostalgia and forgetfulness to truly understand the perspective of those without our privileges?” (76)

Thankful to be reading this uniquely dialogical book (half and half indigenous and white authors in conversation) as part of a cohort of Canadian Covenant pastors.