World Council delegates hear the 'heartbeat of mother earth' 'Drums have feelings, too' By Parker T. Williamson The Presbyterian Layman Friday, December 11, 1998 Padare leader with drum HARARE, Zimbabwe – Indigenous peoples of the earth were told today that solidarity and self-determination is their only hope in a world where Christians have stolen their spirituality, language and land. Several WCC padares (a Shona word for "meeting place") are focusing on the plight of indigenous people. Like the African sun, indigenous anger is rising to a searing level, matched only by the contrition that is being confessed by white westerners, many of whom are now wearing African clothing, presumably to demonstrate their solidarity with the oppressed. In the WCC's first full day of padares, this rage/remorse syndrome has assumed center stage. Supporting the Shamans A padare on the Sami people, reindeer herders from the Arctic who are fighting Norway, Sweden and Finland for control of their land, started out as a geography lesson. Three padare leaders, dressed in brightly-colored costumes, talked about the history and culture of their people. They said they were being invaded by mining interests who, with the complicity of the Christian church, are pushing them north. Anger accelerated as they told how Sami faith had been discounted by Christian missionaries in the past and is still demeaned by the church today. "Our people have shamans," said a Sami leader. "When a women is pregnant, the shaman communes with the ancestors." Ancestors decide which of them will return to earth in this birth, and the woman names her child accordingly. Thus the shaman links two worlds. This, said the padare leader, is "what missionaries took from our people." A woman in the group then said that when she tried to introduce a shaman element into her church's liturgy, leaders - whom she labeled "conservatives" - resisted. "They called it syncretism," she said. A chorus of dismay rose from other indigenous people in the room, and a young man from Ghana jumped to his feet, raised his fist and yelled, "They did that to our medicine man!" "Me too," shouted a man from Bolivia. "Come to the padare next door, and you'll hear more," said a Native American. Beating the drum for justice Titled "Spirit of the Land - Rhythm of the Drum," the padare next door had a distinct beat to it. Entering the room a few moments early, I saw a man with flowing black hair, sharply defined cheek bones - clearly a North American Indian - playing a drum. Hoping to photograph him before the session began, I extracted my camera from its bag and attached the flash unit. By this time he had laid the drum on a table, so I introduced myself and asked if he would hold the drum for a photograph. "I cannot do that." he replied, "I don't know this drum." "You don't actually have to play it," I responded. "I only want you to hold it for the picture." "But this is not my drum." "Surely the owner won't mind if you just hold it for a picture," I pleaded. "The drum has feelings too. It has a life of its own." Moving to the center of the room, the padare leader then announced to a gathering crowd that it was entering Indian country." "You are now on Indian land, and you will respect our traditions, something that the white invader never did." Beating the drum, the padare leader began to chant a prayer while several fair-haired Americans wearing African garb closed their eyes and swayed to the rhythm. Then, he torched a clump of sage and commenced wafting smoke around the room with an eagle feather. Litanies of oppression At this point two women and a man entered the room. Scotch tape sealed their lips. The leader smudged each of them from top to bottom and sent them around the room to shake hands with WCC delegates. "The handshake is very important to us," said the leader. "It means that we now have a relationship that you cannot break. So you cannot leave this room until we're through. This handshake was broken by the white man. He stole our land and our spirituality which is intimately connected with Mother Earth. You will not break this handshake." Ceremoniously, the padare leader removed the tape from his companions' lips, and for the next 45 minutes, they told "stories," a litany of abuse and oppression that Native Americans have suffered. Two white women in the audience, one who appeared to be American and the other who was Swedish, became visibly disturbed and began making sympathetic sounds. The padare leader punctuated those sighs with his drum, provoking additional expressions of mounting outrage. A different salvation plan A woman from Turtle Island who identified herself as a United Methodist leader said, "I was silenced by the church. I will be silenced no longer. We are uniting with indigenous people around the world. When we are on the land, we feel the spirits of our ancestors. How else could five pagans stand up against five million Christians? We have a different salvation plan, and it has to do with the land." She named a long list of abuses that she and her people had suffered at the hands of white people, including criticism by church leaders over the fact that Indians are hosting gambling casinos on their land. "In our culture, we have always had games," she said. Show and tell A young man who identified himself as Richard Brown walked to the front of the room. Unwrapping his multi-colored blanket and lowering it to his groin he asked, "what did you come here to see? I am naked. Here is my voice, and it is yet to be silenced." Brown's complaint focused primarily on his people's loss of their native tongue. Visibly moved, an American woman cried out "Oh thank you, thank you. Thank you for not giving up on the rest of us. Thank you for teaching us. Thank you for giving us a chance …." At this point a Peruvian man rushed forward. "We must unite," he said as the padare leader pounded his drum. "The church cannot save us!" (another drum beat). "Let us search for an inter-religious dialogue that will give us solidarity. (More drum beats and applause). One and a half hours after having smudged this gathering, the padare leader summarized its visit to Indian land. "Indian people have been severely hurt for 500 years," he said. "But we know that if there is any healing, it must come from ourselves. It will not come from the church (drum beat). It will not come from the government (drum beat). It will not come from the White man (drum beat). It will come only from ourselves. You cannot heal us, but you can stand with us in our healing … and you can work for your own healing also." A WCC program This padare was more than multi-cultural entertainment amidst a smorgasbord of seminar selections. It was designed to demonstrate an on-going program conducted by the WCC through its Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation division. The WCC's Indigenous People's Program claims that its purpose is "to clarify the past and present issues of denial, destruction and denigration of indigenous spiritualities and ancestral values …." The program states its goal: "justice through indigenous sovereignty, repossession of their lands and a renewed call for a greater participation in the life of the member churches and the WCC itself." Included in the WCC program are the objectives of obtaining for and with indigenous people "self-determination and autonomy" and "religious rights to develop their own spiritual life." WCC principles that form the program's content and direction include an explicit rejection of "the assumption that the Gospel/Bible culture [is] the only Good News." Consistent with that assumption, in more than three hours of padare discussion, Jesus Christ was never mentioned.

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