Content warning: self-harm and death by suicide.
Last week, norovirus swept through our home, delaying my posting as I’m still recovering. Every illness offers a lesson, but I don’t want to romanticize this experience. Just Google the symptoms of norovirus and imagine sounding wise while your body expels all its contents. It’s truly humbling.
Healing the body from disease can be extremely uncomfortable, yet it is essential to cleansing. This process can sometimes be violent and even fatal. I also don’t want to make my experience seem exceptional. I think about the millions of Palestinians in Gaza who have endured or are enduring the systematic destruction of their society, where scarcity is imposed and sickness runs rampant. Yet, they persist despite the overwhelming odds.
Lakota people often fast without food or water for days or endure physical discomfort, such as exposure to the elements, as a part of prayer or ceremony. The harsh realities of surviving unforgiving winters made suffering inevitable, so it is no surprise it was made part of our spiritual lives. We are, after all, survivors of so much more, and we are so much more than just survivors.
In his book, Life’s Journey — Zuya, the Sicangu educator and linguist Albert White Hat Sr. explains how Christian missionaries mistranslated the Lakota word “wocekiye” to mean “praying.” He writes, “[B]owing and kneeling to a supreme power” is very different from the original meaning of “acknowledging or meeting a relative.” Only someone with White Hat’s profound grasp of Lakota culture and language could fully understand that original meaning, and my understanding is limited to my personal experiences.
As a child, I worked hard to memorize Christian prayers and recite Bible stories. A Dakota Lutheran pastor taught me several prayers in our language, especially the names for Jesus—Wanikiya and Christe Tanka—the word for holy or sacred, Wakan, and God, Wakan Tanka. Each word carries different meanings outside the context of Christianity and some have been purposely mistranslated, but learning them was the first time I saw myself in the church.
That pastor sometimes had me help him carry his things as he had the use of only one of his arms and a limp that prevented him from moving around the altar. He never mentioned his physical disabilities, always reminding those around him of God’s love and our role in bringing His children to the flock. He appeared to me as a man saved by mercy and grace, a faithful servant.
He gave me my first Bible with a shepherd holding a baby sheep on the cover. The shepherd was white. I later returned to him that Bible, placing it in his coffin. They found his body the day we happened to be playing across the street from his house. A police car and ambulance were parked outside. We asked our parents if we could see if he was okay. The previous Halloween, he answered his door, handing us candy. This time, our parents encouraged us not to knock. He had taken his own life.
I forgot the prayers he taught me. I can recall only a few words and phrases now.
Today, I watch videos in the Lakota language and listen to songs with my daughter, picking up familiar words from Christian prayers, especially the Lakota Christmas carols. I think of the pastor, how he suffered, and whether he is at peace today. I try to remember him for the comfort he brought me with his words, perhaps sensing my alienation and feelings of unbelonging.
My father tried teaching us concepts in Lakota culture, such as the belief that plants and animals have spirits and languages that only if we listen closely enough can we begin to understand. This wasn’t in the Bible, but Lakotas also weren’t in the Bible.
We had little patience for dad’s stories, not that they weren’t interesting. They seemed so radically different than what we learned at school and church. Once, he tried to explain the deep connection our family has to the land at Medicine Creek. We sat there, dumbfounded, unable to fully grasp the monologue of words and names of people, places, plants, animals, and stories — all converging at this one location.
I remember thinking, “We must be special.” The prairie seemed endless, and the black gumbo hills rolled along the banks. In the middle of it all was the river, so swollen and wide that it seemed like it swallowed the earth around it. Only later did I learn that not all rivers are this big, and not all land is like ours. But I didn’t feel special.
Dad must have sensed our inability to understand why it was so central to who we were. “This is Jesus’s country,” he said, resigned, trying to convey the powers of converging waters, a river and a creek by reluctantly resorting to a Christian analogue.
“It is?” I wondered, surprised.
I asked my Sunday school teacher if Jesus was from the reservation. She laughed at me. I told her my father’s story. She seemed utterly confused, then explained that Jesus was from Nazareth. She showed us some illustrations of Biblical characters, all looking like white people. I wondered if Nazareth was somewhere in Europe. It didn’t look like my dad’s land.
What brought Lakotas so close to the powers of creation? We’re no different from other cultures that have emerged in a time and place.
Later, I realized my Sunday school teacher didn’t have stories like my father’s about the connection to the land. That’s why the Bible illustrations looked like they were from Europe. It was her connection that was elsewhere. Ours was here. And maybe that’s what my pastor mentor was trying to teach me, through his own suffering and use of our language, that we will name what is sacred and holy in our own language, even if they don’t share the same meanings. Perhaps Christianity, for him, was an imperfect way to connect to his relatives. Maybe it was wocekiye for him.
And maybe Jesus was from the reservation.