Red Foxes Talking Circle

jacknife said:

i never really thought of this. the idea is fun for someone like me because atheism is an insignificant part of who i am. i never thought how it might actually be hard for someone to imagine themselves as another faith.

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I think it is easier for Red Fox to think of Indian spirituality as an alternative to Christianity because she stands at the demarcation line of two religious traditions. To deny either one is to deny an important part of her identity. That's why I was urging her to find some way of being both instead of feeling like she has to choose between one or the other.

jacknife said:

i never thought how it might actually be hard for someone to imagine themselves as another faith.

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it's actually easier then you think once you kick down the 'doors' that mentally block you from thinking outside your 'spiritual' mindset. Once that door is down it can get easy to slip in and out of different faiths and beliefs. They are all pretty much the same when it comes down to brass tacks.

Just remember, Jesus was not a white European.

Red Fox said:

That is correct. I have been told more times than I care to count that I have to give up my entire NDN identity to be a true Christian and to be saved. I have been told if I want to be truly civilized and accepted into white society, I must first reject everything NDN about myself. And on the other hand, I have been told more times than I care to count by other NDNs that I can't be a real NDN if I remain Christian. I have been told I betray and dishonor my people and my ancestors for being Christian. I'm told I have sold out my NDN soul for the white man's religion. I mean no offense when I say that but I have been told this before by some other NDNs. I feel trapped spiritually and there is no escape for me. I have spent the last 24 and a half years living in emotional and spiritual turmoil.

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Red Fox said:

Dear friends of my Talking Circle, would you please do me a favor and read my post here and then let me know what you think about it. I would really appreciate it. Thank you. I'm rather proud of what I said in that post and I would like to know what my friends here in the Circle think about what I said.

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To me your post just restated the obvious truth. But I think Buffy St. Marie said it best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKKX-H3NMNI

Red Fox said:

I think it's kind of funny for a non-native person to tell me I can leave America if I don't like it. Say what?

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Did i miss something?

Red Fox said:

I'm sorry, it was not here. I should have specified that it was in another thread I'm participating in. My apologies.

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Ah found the thread. It is in one of the folders where we heathens are not allowed to post. I notice the person who made that commented claimed he was of Norwegian descent whose ancestor came relatively recently. He also mentioned that it might have been worse had his Viking ancestors arrived first since they were so barbaric. Apparently he does realize that the Vikings came centuries before the Spaniards and other Europeans. Yet they left no visible mark on the native culture. Why was that? Probably because Northern Europeans had not yet been exposed themselves to all those diseases which would eventually wipe out the bulk of Native Americans. Northern Europe seems to get all those diseases in the 14th century (along with a massive die off) and the Vikings came in the eleventh century.

Truth is that getting to America was no big deal. It is what happens afterwards. Polynesians almost certainly made it to the coast of what is now Chile, for instance. We know this because they left their chicken bones behind (there were no chickens in the Americas.) And they took back with them the sweet potato which then spread throughout Polynesia. But the Polynesians were nearly as disease-free as the Native Americans.

This is true. I post in OBOB frequently. As long as you don't challenge the positions of the religion in their section you are fine.

Red Fox said:

FYI, non-Christians can post in the congregational forums. That is allowed. The thread I spoke of is in the OBOB Political forum.

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Indeed. I post quite a bit in the reformed forum. They don't mind as long as you are respectful of that particular subforums rules.

Red Fox said:

Considering what I just went through in the thread Judge Blocks Obamas Executive Order On Immigration, in the OBOB political forum, I'm thinking about leaving CF for a while, perhaps even for good.

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I was astounded at the amount of xenophobia and downright race hatred that was evident in that list. Could they really belong to the same religion as Pope Francis?

Don't go away, stay in *our* folder.

Red Fox said:

I have been told I betray and dishonor my people and my ancestors for being Christian. I'm told I have sold out my NDN soul for the white man's religion. ..I feel trapped spiritually and there is no escape for me. I have spent the last 24 and a half years living in emotional and spiritual turmoil.

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I think what matters and yet often gets forgotten is that what matters at the end of the day (as important as our ethnic identity is) is whether we say we wish to follow Jesus or not - if saying we want to actually honor what He is about. It doesn't matter if NDS say one doesn't reflect their heritage enough since even Jesus was not accepted fully by His own people in His day when the Jews rejected him and only certain people follow Him - and it doesn't matter if those outside of NDS perspective (claiming Christ) say that one isn't "godly" enough because they have much to celebrate in regards to NDS. For at the end of the day, even people outside of Christ's ethnic heritage (Jewish) ended up neglecting much of the beauty in Jewish culture when Gentiles started to become more dominant in Christianity as it spread - one of the reasons why it is difficult for many in Jewish culture to separate Christianity from a Gentile perspective in the same way others claim Christianity is a "White Man's Religion" like many Native Americans or Blacks do.

As it stands, Christ was nowhere near being fully like many in European Christianity anyhow - as he was part of a Semitic people who had many similarities to the Native American people when it came to the nomadic, tribal and community-oriented roots. This is why others have noted that many within Native American culture need to cease with the line "Christ can't relate to us" and actually deal honestly with how the culture in the Bible was when it comes to seeing the other groups in that era who reflect Native Americans - and as a practical example:
As an aside, there's a reason that Quaker William Penn believed that the Native Americans were Hebrews, descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel - and others have noted the same exact thing, although on differing levels, when it comes to seeing Native Americans being reflective of Israel - AND of course, with mixed cultures, many who are Jewish and Native American already have this battle. I know one of my good friends Brother Shimshon has often spoken on the subject many times whenever people question him about his being Taino, Puerto Rican and Jewish..( #2#4 #35 #164 ) - as said before here:


For references on the ways Jews were and are very similar to Native Americans, one may wish to go to the following:

• https://books.google.com/books?id=7...Native Americans like Nomadic Hebrews&f=false

• Cherokee - one of the lost tribes??

• A Jew Among the Inuit ? Forward.com

• Jew or Not Jew: John Baker

But as said before, there's really no reason having what often appears to be a false battle saying "I have to either be Native or Christian" - that often can indicate one feels there is a choice to be made where there really is none and at the end of the day Jesus is not enough.

And for me, the issue does hit close to home seeing where Native American culture ties in with where I'm at. \\

My ancestors intermarried with other groups - yet they never forgot their heritage nor the need to tell others to keep fighting so that there'd be continual forcing of others into hard places ...and destruction overall. As shared before, For myself, although my roots from my mother connect me with Afro-Hispanic and West Indian culture, my grandmother from my biological father's side was strong BlackFoot Indian. If you saw pictures of her (from the red skin to the high cheek bones), you'd see instantly. It's something I've often had a lot of battles with in explaining to others since they'd look at me and never think I had that in my blood and loved that culture...or that it's possible to have mixture from mutliple cultures into one person/group - just like it was for the Black Seminoles. Truthfully, it is amazing to see how many blacks have often had a lot of sharp battles with Indigenious groups when it comes to identity, as many have said blacks weren't "Indian" enough while other Indigenious groups who accepted blacks that were mixed were deemed as harming the tribe/limiting authenticity. First Nations Groups/Native Americans have the concept of others being adopted into tribes/being considered to be fully amongst the people...although even this is something that does not always play out without flaw since many in differing tribes often had issue with others due to their ancestry from others outside the tribe...whereas others had no issue acknowledging where one could be BlackFoot and yet have other blood in them.

One of the best reads I was able to check out on the issue years ago is entitled "Black Indians" by William Lorenz Katz ----and for more info, one can go online/investigate an article under the name of "William Loren Katz | Black Indians. Black West." () and "Black Indians by William Loren Katz" () The book itself goes into great depth discussing the issues of what went down for those who were products of mixed marriages/alliances between American Indians and Blacks.....and it also talked on why it seemed that blacks and Native Americans often were quick to form alliances more in ways that amazed the Europeans coming to conquer them...even though there were many battles between the groups even after intermixing (more shared here at "Indivisible: African Native American Lives in the Americas" ( ) ).