Reflections on Reconciliation – A Way Forward

For some time now I have been reading Bishop Steven Charleston’s book, We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America On Apocalypse and Hope. Bishop Charleston is a retired Episcopal Bishop and member of the Choctaw Nation. I have been challenged by the book and have found valuable life lessons in its pages. As one reviewer said, this book is a poignant, deeply moving account of the many lessons the world can learn from Native American responses to the apocalypse of settler colonialism. These lessons are even more urgently necessary now that the entire planet faces the predicament of the Indigenous peoples whose worlds were destroyed by maelstroms of avarice and aggression. (Review by Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement, as found on the back cover of the book)

Saturday night we finished watching Ken Burns’ documentary, The American Revolution on PBS. Both the documentary and Bishop Charleston’s book have been speaking to my heart, especially in these challenging times in the American national experience. To say that the documentary was powerful, gut wrenching, and filled with raw honesty would be an understatement. Ken Burns pulled no punches in telling the story; thus the naked truth was both uncomfortable to hear and to watch. There were no absolute heroes just as there were no absolute villains. What was revealed was a very complicated and messy reality where no one was perfect. At the end of the series there were a lot of unanswered questions as I thought about how this nation’s future would continue to unfold.

At the end of the American Revolutionary War, a lot of the Colonies had been destroyed literally and figuratively. The patriots who had fought for freedom and those who had remained loyal to the English Crown had to figure out how to rebuild their country. The Indigenous peoples and the African American slaves and freedmen who had fought on both sides had to make their way through the broken promises made by the white Europeans on both sides.

History can be very messy as can the process of healing. This quote from Bishop Charleston’s book is a very good summary of that process. Reconciliation is not pretty. It is often covered in blood. It demands a clear memory of what really happened, and that memory can be very ugly. So much of America’s hope to be seen as a great nation remains buried beneath the snow of Wounded Knee. To resurrect it from the grave is like putting life into the hands of death. It is a fearful choice for both the Indigenous people of North America and their oppressors. It means facing one another in the clear light of history. It means acknowledging the truth. It means having the humility to ask for forgiveness in order to create a new future. Very often, when faced with that level of change, people from both clans, the oppressed and the oppressor, draw back and reman fixed in a position of anger and blame… [this only] leaves us with a broken tablet of our own history. (p. 162)

Looking at where we are right now in the US is scary; it isn’t pretty and it’s very painful. I find myself wondering how, or even if, we can recover from the damage that has been done by this administration and its policies at home and abroad. Is the Constitution on life-support or can it be revived? So many challenging questions… it’s difficult not to slide into hopelessness and despair. I wish I had easy answers, but I don’t.

As Bishop Charleston writes: This horrific part of North American history has long remained hidden. Now, as it is being slowly revealed, it provokes enormous sorrow and anger in the Indigenous community, and deep reactions of either guilt or denial from the white community. In graphic language, it is gut wrenching. Most people from both communities would not wish to long dwell on the scarring memories it raises. But… we have to look at those scars. We have to not lose our memory, no matter how painful that memory may be. Life must be reconciled with death. (p. 163)

That slow process must continue… for many, it must begin now. Only in honest truth-telling on both sides can reconciliation be possible. Both now and into the future, may God help us to do the hard work wherever we may be in this world.