In June 2023, the United States Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling that could determine the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act. This 1978 law governs the adoption process for indigenous children, and its dismantling could have ruinous consequences for native tribes.
The exploitation of native children has always been the tip of the spear when it comes to dismantling the tribal sovereignty of Native Americans. After all, without children there can be no next generation to carry on religious and cultural traditions, preserve tribal languages and inherit tribal lands.
Sadly, churches along with Christian organizations and individuals have readily lent their support to these endeavors. Sometimes unwittingly, other times very much aware of the harm they were causing to native tribes.
Embedded theology
“At the heart of it is some embedded theology, theology we operate on by default but rarely pull out and examine in detail, that has bought into the lie that indigenous peoples are more sinful than white people, and that their communities are more tainted by evil and “darkness” than other communities,” said Jodi Spargur, founder and director of Red Clover Initiatives. Red Clover helps churches understand their role in colonialism and promotes healing and justice through native-led action.
“These pseduo-theological assumptions came out of the same writings that were used to justify the Crusades and the slave trade,” she added. “While we would reject wholesale the specific claims of these documents if we read them, we nevertheless operate under their influence.”
As far back as 1609, leaders at Jamestown received orders from Virginia Company lawyers in London to seize the children of the Powhatan Nation and educate them according to English customs and religion so that “their people will easily obey you and become in time civil and Christian.”
Because children are “moldable, in a formative state,” Spargur said, they were vulnerable targets for the “government’s assimilationist policies.”
The most well-known example is the kidnapping of the teenage Matoaka (Pocahontas), who was held hostage until she converted to Christianity. The crown and Company hoped hers would be the first of many conversions that would place native land into government hands under the pious guise of saving souls.
Read more about the history of Native American adoption and the way it’s been used to endanger tribal sovereignty at Baptist News Global.
