By Craig Anderson
Racism is the greatest challenge facing the church. But we must not be tricked into thinking that the struggle against the pernicious evil of institutional racism is limited to apartheid in South Africa. The greater question before us is not how do we support anti-apartheid forces in South Africa, but how will we confront the racism that pervades all human society? Are we prepared to work for a United States and a world where people of every color play an equal part or will we continue to view non-whites as expendable at the mercy of political and economic forces? The struggle against racism is dramatically engaged in South Africa, but it is being fought around the world: in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, in Central America, even in some parts of this country.
“Apartheid” (meaning “separation” in Afrikaans) is a separation of life and opportunity founded in a legally established system unique to South Africa. Its roots lie in the Dutch and British colonial conquest of Southern Africa that began in 1652. In a country where 16% of the population (White) controls 87% of the land and where 73% of the population (Black) is denied the vote, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, access to adequate education, housing and health care, South Africa is the only nation in the world to deny political rights to the majority of its people simply on the basis of race.
Such institutional racism and injustice have given rise to mounting violence over the past several years. Through individual diocesan resolutions and the action of the General Convention, the Episcopal Church has joined with other branches of the Anglican Communion and other churches in denouncing apartheid. Direct aid, economic sanctions, prophetic resolutions, and ongoing prayer constitute a world-wide ecclesial call to repentance.
Theologically, a more fundamental understanding of apartheid can be found in the way the word itself is pronounced – “apart-hate.” Such “apart-hate” born of “apartness” or separation is the root cause of sin. Its opposite, “righteousness,” refers to being “in a right relationship with one another and God.” The call from apart-hate to righteousness is a call to reconciliation mandated by the Gospel.
While apartheid is unique to South Africa, apart-hate, grounded in sin as separation, is found in all cultures and countries that participate in and perpetuate institutional racism. There is a certain sinful irony that attends our protests against apartheid, because we fail to see the ongoing apart-hate within our own community. While not as blatant as in South Africa, institutional racism pervades our culture and church. Perhaps it is easier to recognize the obvious and distant while missing institutional racism in our won backyard. Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning, in a recent address to the Executive Council, locating the problem within our own culture and church, said, “The issue of institutional racism keeps coming forward as I travel and meet with church people in this country… When I met with the leadership of the National Commission on Indian Work and other representatives of the Native American community, the issue of racism was one of their greatest concerns… When I met with members of the Hispanic community in the Southwest, the issue was racism… When I met with the Union of Black Episcopalians, the issue was racism… I am sure that when I meet with the leadership of the Asian-American community, the issue will be the same.”
Institutional racism in the reservation system is experienced by the Native American community in South Dakota. While this system is not as obvious or destructive as South Africa’s apartheid system, there are certain similarities. Both Black South Africans and Lakota/Dakota/Nakota people are a “native” population. While the number and percentage of Native Americans is less than 10% of the state’s population, this minority group, like Blacks in South Africa, represent the indigenous population of the land. Unlike other minority groups in the United States, the violation of Native American civil rights is more pronounced by the historic and ongoing disregard for treaties made with the Sioux Nation over the past 100 years.
The reservation system has certain parallels with the “Bantustans” of South Africa. Between 1960 and 1982, 3.5 million Blacks were forced to relocate to ten “independent homelands” or Bantustans, which comprise 13% of the land in South Africa. These “independent homelands” are located in areas where the land is barren, desolate, and economically non-viable. Eroded and infertile, the Bantustans mean hunger for those who live there. With no economic base and unemployment approaching 50% in some areas, Blacks are forced to find employment elsewhere, their movements carefully controlled by pass laws.
Reservations in South Dakota represent a small and shrinking percentage of the state’s total land. Like the Bantustans, reservation land is the poorest land in South Dakota and provides no economic base. On most of the nine reservations, unemployment exceeds 80%. While there are no pass laws, leaving the reservation means giving up certain economic, legal, and health “rights” guaranteed by long-standing treaties.
Life on the reservation reads like a litany of despair. In addition to unemployment and no economic base, the reservations have the highest rate of infant mortality, teenage suicide, alcoholism and diabetes in the United States. Violence is pervasive within reservation culture and affects almost every family. Such conditions create a ubiquitous depression, born of anger turned inward, which results in a culture of despair.
Defenders of the reservation system would no doubt immediately protest that comparing reservations to Bantustans is overdrawn and unfair. However, the pressure of family, band and tribal loyalties combined with economic pressure result in the reservations becoming rural ghettos. Lakota/Dakota/Nakota people are a people of the land. To leave the land is to abandon one’s identity and people. Apart from the people and land there is no identity for Native Americans in South Dakota. Such a spiritual and cultural attachment to the land is difficult for non-Native Americans in South Dakota. Ownership and possession of land are foreign to Lakota culture and spirituality. How can one “own” that which gives rise to life itself?
The reservation system is a silent form of apartheid. There are many layers of the system: The Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Services, tribal government itself and the paternalism of churches. It should be remembered that the Episcopal Church, along with other denominations, was “assigned” by the government to help “settle” and “civilize” the Dakota territory over 100 years ago.
“Silent” apartheid means there is no grand design or systematically conscious attempt to bring apart-hate. None of the institutions mentioned above consciously intend separation or segregation. Autonomy, self-determination, national sovereignty and racial identity are offered as justifications for the reservation system. But how can there be autonomy, sovereignty or self-determination without economic self-determination and equal rights? The church, perhaps the most trusted institution on the reservation, participates unconsciously and subtly in this silent apartheid. The call for increasing indigenous leadership in congregations is met with the external and imposed answers of new “creative” forms of “non-stipendiary” ministry. Non-stipendiary ministry assumes an economic base for secular employment. With over 80% unemployment, non-stipendiary forms are hardly creative.
In the Diocese of South Dakota, 88 out of the 129 congregations are located on the reservations. There is an average of one priest for every 7.2 congregations. The typical reservation priest can barely sustain a crisis approach to ministry, much less develop new and creative programs. It is hardly surprising that such priests, underpaid and overworked, burn out after a few years. Nor is it surprising that forms of preparation for ordained ministry on the reservation turn out to be inadequate when the leadership of the church is called to enable change, transformation and reconciliation. To understand, let alone address, the problems of extreme poverty, despair and isolation requires a modicum of theological understanding and certain ministerial skills. Rather than requiring the least amount of theological education for such ministry, reservation ministry points to the need for thorough theological training that includes a sensitivity and ability to minister in a Third World environment. Such ministry is called to address and transform the forces and institutions of segregation and apart-hate rather than unintentionally participate in new forms of paternalism and ethnocide.
Contemporary philosophy and theology, as well as the behavioral sciences, yield certain insights into institutional racism. Destructive stereotypes inform institutional policies and programs. Cynical typifications of Native Americans include stereotyping them as lazy, drunken and corrupt. Sentimental typifications make them anachronistic “noble savages” who are fascinating subjects for cultural anthropologists.
The result of such stereotypes is that rather than interacting with Native Americans as people, the church approaches them as “problems” that need to be solved. Treating another human being as a “problem” robs him or her of humanity. The label is confronted rather than the person. Vast amounts of money and programs are generated to fix or solve the problems. External solutions which violate Native American culture are applied, e.g. creating government “cluster housing” or buying a person’s dignity cheaply through inadequate entitlements and subsistence programs. In order to survive, dependency on and manipulation of such programs is the Native American response. Dependency is resented and manipulation becomes a way of life. But the money and the programs are short-lived and the litany of despair lengthens.
Within the church, ministry “to and for the Indians” perpetuates a we-they separation and deepens dependency. Phrases such as “the plight of our Native American brothers and sisters in the church” serve to underscore that Native Americans in the church are a “problem to be solved.” And yet few in the church know of the plight. Owanah Anderson of the church’s National Committee on Indian Work refers to the situation as “an ignorance of ignorance.” Few Episcopalians are aware of the plethora of problems that confront persons on the reservation and in the church. The isolation and segregation wrought by “reserving” people further fosters such ignorance of ignorance.
I suspect that most Episcopalians know more about apartheid in South Africa and the 1976 Soweto riots than they do about the ongoing institutional racism on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, or the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation. It is interesting to note that it has only been in recent years, through a liberation theology developed in Third World nations, that we are now realizing Native American spirituality, with its emphasis on sharing and giving, may have something to say to the non-Native American churches. Perhaps Native American values of cooperation, extended family loyalties, wholeness and the centrality of religion in all life may be elements that could transform and renew the entire church. Native Americans have a significant ministry to non-Native Americans that has yet to be realized.
The Witness – Volume 71, Number 11