Strictly speaking, “apartheid” (meaning in Afrikaans, separation) is a separation of life and opportunity founded in a legally established system unique to South Africa. With roots in the Dutch and British colonial conquest of Southern Africa beginning in 1652 over the succeeding three and a quarter centuries a distinct governmental system has arisen, It is 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.
Ultimate blasphemy
Such institutional racism and injustice have given rise to a mounting violence over the past several years. Between September of 1984 and April 1986, over 12,000 blacks have been killed and 36,000 arrested. In commenting on the suffering and exploitation that have caused by such institutional racism, Archbishop Desmond Tutu forcefully states, “the ultimate evil is not the suffering, excruciating as that may be, which is meted out to those who are God’s children. The ultimate evil of oppression, and certainly of that policy of South Africa called apartheid, is when it succeeds in making a child of God begin to doubt that he or she is a child of God. That is the ultimate blasphemy.”
Through individual diocesan resolutions and the action of General Convention, the Episcopal Church has joined with other branches of the Anglican Communion and larger Church worldwide 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 or just relationship with one another and God.” The call from apart-hate to righteousness is a call to reconciliation mandated by the Gospel.
Apartheid here?
While apartheid is, strictly speaking, 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 to apartheid in South Africa. In such protests, we fail to see the ongoing apart-hate within our own country, within our own community. While not as blatant as in South Africa, institutional racism is pervasive within our own culture and Church. Perhaps it is easier to recognize the obvious and the distant while missing the institutional racism in our own backyard.
The words of our Presiding Bishop in a recent address to the Executive Council help us to locate the problem within our own culture and Church, “. . .The issue of institutional racism keeps coming forward as I travel and as I 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 leadership of the Asian-American community the issue will be the same.
Look at the parallels
Within South Dakota, institutional racism is experienced within the Native American community and reservation system. While not as obvious or destructive as the apartheid system of South Africa, there are similarities.
Both black South Africans and Lakota/Dakota/Nakota people constitute a “native” population. While the number and percentage of Native Americans in South Dakota is less than 10% of the state’s population this “minority group”, and the black inhabitants of South Africa, represent the indigenous population of the land.
Unlike other minority groups in the United States, the violation of civil rights is more pronounced by the violation of legal rights to include the historic and ongoing disregard for treaties made with the Sioux Nation over the past one hundred years.
The reservation system has certain parallels with the “Bantustans” of South Africa. Between 1960 and 1962, 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 nonviable. 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 and are carefully controlled by “pass laws”.
Reservation lands within South Dakota represent a small and shrinking percentage of the total land within the state. Like the Bantustans, reservation land in South Dakota is the poorest land in the state and provides no economic base. On most of the nine reservations in the state, unemployment exceeds 80%. While there are no “pass laws” on the reservations, 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 the lack of an economic base, the highest rate of infant mortality, teenage suicide, alcoholism and diabetes in the United States are found on the reservation. While the incident at Wounded Knee stands out as a national tragedy, violence is pervasive within reservation culture and affects almost every family. Such conditions give rise to a ubiquitous depression born of an inward turning of anger resulting in a culture of despair.
A Silent Apartheid
Defenders of the reservation system would, no doubt, immediately protest that the comparison of the reservation system with that of the Bantustans is overdrawn and unfair. No one is denied citizenship or forced to move to the reservation. However, the pressure of family, band and tribal loyalties combined with economic pressure result in the reservations becoming rural ghettos.
Personal and racial identity are tied to the land. LakotalDakota/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-Indians to understand.
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” represents a silent form of institutional segregation born of institutional racism. There are many layers in the system: the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Health Services, tribal government itself and the past and abiding paternalism of the Church. It should be remembered that the Episcopal Church, along with other denominations, were “assigned” by the government to help “settle” and “civilize” the Dakota Territory over a hundred years ago.
“Silent” apartheid refers to the fact that there is no grand design or systematically conscious attempt to bring about apart-hate. None of the institutions mentioned above consciously intend separation or segregation. Autonomy, self-determination, national sovereignty and racial identity are offered as justification for the reservation system. But how can there be autonomy, sovereignty or self-determination without economic self-determination and the upholding of legal rights?
Non-creative ministry
The Church, perhaps the most trusted institution on the reservation, participates unconsciously and more subtly in a silent apartheid. The call for increasing indigenous leadership within congregations is met with the external and somewhat imposed answers of new ‘creative” forms of “non-stipendiary” ministry, “Non-stipendiary” ministry assumes an economic base for secular employment. With over 80% unemployment, “nonstipendiary” forms are hardly “creative”.
Of the one hundred and twenty-nine congregations within the Diocese of South Dakota, eighty-eight are located on the reservations within the state. 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 who are underpaid and overworked “burn out” after a few short years.
Nor is it surprising that indigenous forms of preparation for ordained ministry that are cast up and labeled as “new and creative” are problematic, if the ordained leadership of the Church is to be called to enable change, transformation and reconciliation. To understand, let alone address the problem 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 theological education 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 participating in new forms of paternalism and ethnocide.
A Deeper Silence
Contemporary philosophy and theology, as well as the behavioral sciences, yield certain insights which aid in understanding institutional racism. Destructive stereotypes born of “typifications” which guide interpersonal behavior inform both institutional policies and programs. Cynical typifications of Native Americans include stereotyping Indian people as “lazy,” “drunken,” and “corrupt”.
Sentimental typifications make of all Indians anachronistic “noble savages” who are fascinating subjects of investigation for cultural anthropologists.
Such typifications result in certain cointentionalities (the way in which Native Americans are “meant” and the way in which non-Indians are meant by Native Americans).
Some specific examples might help to illustrate such abstract concepts.
“The Indian Problem”:
Rather than interacting with Indian people as people, Indians as problems are intended or meant as a “problem” to be solved. In treating another human being as a “problem,” he or she is robbed of his or her humanness. The person as a problem becomes labeled and the label or typification is confronted rather than the person. Vast amounts of money and programs are generated to fix or solve the “problem”.
External solutions which violate the culture are applied, e.g., government “cluster housing”. The dignity of the person is “bought” cheaply through inadequate “entitlements” and subsistence programs. In order to survive, dependency and manipulation of such programs is the response of the Native American person. The dependency is resented and the manipulation becomes a way of life in order to survive. The money and programs are short lived and the litany of despair lengthens.
“Ministry to the Indians”:
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 intending Native Americans within the Church as a “problem to be solved”.
And yet few within the Church know of the “plight”. Owanah Anderson of the National Committee on Indian Work refers to the situation as ‘an ignorance of ignorance”. Few Episcopalians are aware of the plethora of problems and issues that confront persons on the reservation and within the Church. The isolation and segregation wrought by “reserving” people further fosters such ignorance of ignorance.
I suspect that most Episcopalians are more knowledgeable of apartheid in South Africa and Soweto riots of 1976 than they are of the institutional racism on the Pine Ridge Reservation located in the poorest county in the United Stats, or the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973.
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 that Native American spirituality, with its emphasis on sharing and giving from poverty and loss, may have something important to say to the non-Indian Churches.
Perhaps the Native American values of cooperation, extended family loyalties, wholeness and the centrality of religion in all of life may be elements that could transform and renew the entire Church. Perhaps Indians have a significant ministry to non-Indians that has yet to be realized.
Part III and conclusion in next month’s column.