What Was God Saying To Canada's Indigenous People Before the Nativity? Or, How to De-Colonize Christmas

At Christmas, Christians celebrate how they believe God came into the world through Jesus.

But before God came into the world 2,000 years ago in Palestine, what was he saying to Indigenous people in North America at the same time?

After all, it’s not like God wasn’t doing anything to communicate to human beings prior to that event—including to Indigenous people who have been living in North America for as long as 12,000 years. 

So what was God saying?

That’s the question I posed to my friend Terry Leblanc, an Indigenous Christian leader and director of the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies.

While affirming the traditional Christmas story of God breaking into the world as a baby in a particular place and time to provide redemption and restoration for all creation, Leblanc notes this doesn’t mean God wasn’t also speaking to Indigenous people before that event.

While the history we read about in the Bible was unfolding, “there was an historical timeline of equal length unfolding here and in other places of the globe,” he says.

This doesn’t mean “God, as Jesus, was here [in North America],” he adds, although he says there are Indigenous prophecies “of the arrival of the message of Jesus.”

But God “as Creator and God as the Spirit were here,” he states. 

If that’s the case, what was God saying to the Indigenous people of North America? 

According to LeBlanc, God was speaking about things like the seven teachings: Love, respect, courage, honesty, wisdom, humility and truth. 

As an “Indigenous follower of the Jesus Way,” as he describes himself, the biblical story qualifies “the notion of the Creator’s sufficient revelation to Indigenous peoples in the past,” he says. 

“For whatever reason, God chose to enter God’s own creation in human form to perform the ceremony of redemption and restoration, through a particular people group, from a particular land, at a particular time, and that this was for all of creation.” 

When Europeans arrived on this continent, he notes, they assumed North America’s Indigenous people were heathens, people with no prior knowledge whatsoever of God. 

But they did, Leblanc says; they just had a different way of understanding and expressing it through stories. 

Christian missionaries assumed those stories “were irrelevant and/or replaceable by the biblical narrative, instead of recognizing the universal applicability of those [Indigenous] narratives,” he says. 

Blinded to the Creator’s presence among Indigenous people, and conflating Christianity with their own culture, the European missionaries sought to convert them to their way of being Christian. 

“It is this theologically aberrant understanding that has been thrust upon Indigenous peoples,” he says. 

But Indigenous people aren’t the only ones who need to de-colonize the theologically aberrant understandings thrust upon them, he suggests; it’s also something non-Indigenous Christians need to do. 

As Leblanc puts it: “Decolonization is just as needed for Euro-centric Christianity at Christmas as it is for Indigenous peoples. Only then will we be able to see a Christ-filled celebration that is not devoid of culture, but rather expressive of the intent of God through all cultures that have emerged through time.”

For him, that intent is “the redemption and restoration of all things . . . whatever hinders or redirects that intention needs either to be decolonized or set aside entirely.” 

So—what would it mean for non-Indigenous Christians to de-colonize Christmas? After all, it’s been colonized so completely by a culture of consumerism. Separating the biblical message from the cultural and commercial trappings of the season is almost impossible. 

One way to start is remembering the radical idea behind God’s coming to earth: to upend all rulers, structures, cultures and economic and political systems. 

Another is to remember how Jesus, during his ministry, discomforted the political and religious elite, overturned cultural norms and challenged theological certainties by doing things like eating with prostitutes, befriending tax collectors and re-defining the concept of neighbour. 

Or, as Christian author Jonathan Martin put it: If this Christmas the Jesus you worship “makes emperors feel comfortable and oppressed people feel unsafe, it's time for a grand reversal.”

Image above by Jackson Beardy. From the Dec. 21, 2019 Winnipeg Free Press.

Settler or Indigenous: Who Owns the Land?

It’s customary today for events to begin with an acknowledgement that the gathering is occurring on the traditional land of an Indigenous group.

Universities, arts groups, public schools, city councils and even sports teams are doing it.

In religious settings, the United Church of Canada has been among the leaders in this area.

For them, “acknowledging the territory where we gather and the people who have traditionally called it home for thousands of years is a way to continue to live out the church’s Apologies to the First Peoples of North America.”

It also “supports our calls to others to pay respect to Indigenous peoples” and is a way the church can “work toward right relations” with Indigenous people, they say.

I heartily endorse the practice. But while it is good and right to openly acknowledge that the lands on which we meet were once home to Indigenous peoples, from a theological perspective it doesn’t feel like the whole story.

And why is that?

While it is good and right to acknowledge we are meeting on lands that once were home to Indigenous people, for people of faith the land—indeed, the whole planet—doesn’t belong, and never belonged, to anyone.

It belongs to God.

For Christians and Jews, the words of Psalm 24 make this clear.

The earth, it says, “is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.”

For Muslims, the Qur’an states that "Allah created the heavens and the earth, and all that is between them.”

Hindus believe that Vishnu is the creator, sustainer, destroyer and then re-creator of the universe.

Sikhs believe the universe was made by Waheguru (God) who created the earth and all forms of life on it.

Buddhism has no concept of a creator god to explain the origin of the universe. It teaches that everything depends on everything else in the universe.

But the same idea as in the other religions is still present: People are not at the centre. There are other forces at work beyond humankind.

Without getting into a debate about how the earth was made—creation versus evolution—all the world’s major religions acknowledge it was made by, and belongs to God, or gods, or to forces and factors beyond human beings.

For these reasons, I like what my church does. 

The weekly bulletin acknowledges the historical connection between the land we are meeting on and Indigenous people. But it also affirms a broader theological perspective.

It goes like this:

“We affirm with Psalm 24 that the earth’s is the Lord and everything in it. We humbly acknowledge that our worship takes place on Treaty One land, the traditional territory of the Anishinabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Metis Nation. We pray for justice and reconciliation.”

That works for me. But does it work for Indigenous people? 

I asked a couple of my Indigenous friends. They both found it quite acceptable. In fact, one said it is similar to Indigenous beliefs about how the creator made the earth, and how humans—Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike—are responsible to care for it.

Of course, there is much work to be done beyond acknowledgements. This includes taking seriously the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action. 

One of them invites faith groups to “develop ongoing education strategies to ensure that their respective congregations learn about their church’s role in colonization, the history and legacy of residential schools, and why apologies to former residential school students, their families, and communities were necessary.”

Acknowledgements is one small way to work towards that goal. And so is acknowledging that we all have an obligation to care for this earth we share together.