In Every Place

Post Author: Diane Kenaston

This image is fair use as part of the #HonorNativeLand art collection commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. You are invited to download, print, customize, and post this art from www.usdac.us/nativeland. Support the artist at www.pimikwusii.com.

YCWI worship began with a land acknowledgment of the place where we were meeting. I had lived in my city for several years, but I had never before considered that I was on Osage land. I was a settler– an uninvited guest– and I had never once acknowledged the host. This changed when we included a land acknowledgement in our YCWI worship. A land acknowledgment is a way to recognize the traditional inhabitants of a place. 

Every in-person YCWI conference has taken place in North America, which is known to some indigenous communities as “Turtle Island.” Every place where YCWI has hosted a conference has therefore been a site of settler colonialism — the continuing structure of domination that displaces and destroys indigenous communities. In recognition of this ongoing reality, Canadian young clergy women brought the practice of territorial acknowledgment to YCWI. In Canada, territorial acknowledgments have been practiced for a number of years, and Canadian denominations have produced resources like the United Church of Canada’s Acknowledging the Territory in Worship. Groups are encouraged to open public events and gatherings by acknowledging the traditional Native inhabitants of the land. 

Land acknowledgments can disrupt the myths of settler colonialism. This includes the myths that the land was “empty” before settlers got here, that indigenous communities no longer exist, and that treaties are not binding. The truth-telling of a territorial acknowledgment exposes these myths. A downloadable #HonorNativeLand Guide from the U.S. Department of Arts & Culture explains, “Acknowledgment is a simple, powerful way of showing respect and a step toward correcting the stories and practices that erase Indigenous people’s history and culture and toward inviting and honoring the truth.” 

When I attended the YCWI conference just a few miles from my home, I encountered truth that disrupted the lies that I had been living in. I pastored a church that worshiped each week on the traditional territory of the Osage Nation. How could we cultivate a holy subversive community in a colonized place? As a beginning step, we committed to learning more about the people, history, and contemporary concerns of the indigenous communities who had long called this land “home.” We followed the Osage Nation’s land acknowledgment guide, which offered us both language and action for creating change. We confessed our Western Christian heritage of the Doctrine of Discovery. The Holy Spirit kept raising our awareness and calling us to new action. 

Many other faith communities are taking similar steps. The Uniting Church in Australia, which was “the first church in Australia to constitutionally acknowledge Aboriginal and Islander people as the First Peoples of Australia” encourages Acknowledgment of Country / Acknowledgement of First Peoples and mourns that churches’ participation in colonization diminished “the very integrity of the Gospel.” (First Peoples – Uniting Church in Australia). The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) recently offered these Land Acknowledgment Resources for Congregations. Anyone who lives on colonized land can begin learning about the traditional inhabitants of the land where they live through Native Land Digital, which offers cautionary points under Why acknowledge territory?  

Official acknowledgments are not limited to churches located on colonized ground. European churches are also wrestling with what it means to be part of a Christian faith that took “Go ye into all the world” (Mark 16:15) and turned it into a justification for colonization. The Uniting Church in Sweden has repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery and called upon the Swedish government to change legal structures “based on this doctrine and the ideas it expresses, in Sweden and internationally, not the least in the UN, and instead strengthen indigenous peoples’ possibilities to self-government regarding their own development” (Uniting Church in Sweden Repudiates the Doctrine of Discovery). The Evangelical Church in Germany has supported studies critically appraising “the role of the churches and mission agencies in Germany and in Southern Africa during colonial rule” and issued a statement of confession regarding the church’s complicity in the Namibian genocide. This confession led to a public act of recognition and the repatriation of human remains. 

Acknowledgments are only the beginning. According to Métis writer Chelsea Vowel, “Moving beyond territorial acknowledgments means asking hard questions about what needs to be done once we’re ‘aware of Indigenous presence’. It requires that we remain uncomfortable, and it means making concrete, disruptive change” (see Beyond Territorial Acknowledgements). This means that in every place we must cultivate subversive communities. 

YCWI’s 2022 conference therefore had the theme “In Every Place: Cultivating Subversive Community.” This conference was held in fourteen locations across North America and online. Since the in-person sites were gathering on colonized ground, those site hosts were encouraged to include land acknowledgments in the day’s liturgy. Meanwhile, online participants, which included YCW from Europe, were asked to reflect on the people and communities with whom they share land. As one member of the YCWI Europe subgroup commented, “We all share land with people who have different historic and current relationships to this place.” Regardless of whether YCWI members live and work on colonized ground, may the truth that we speak together set us free for holy and subversive ministry in every place.