Catholicism Embraces Native Culture in Mass

Pulsing drumming, high-pitched, mystical chanting and the scent of sage are the first indications: The Saturday evening Mass at St. Peter’s Church is atypical.

St. Peter’s, on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, is at the forefront of a movement within the Catholic Church to embrace native traditions with a monthly liturgy that incorporates Lakota culture.

Brother George Maufort says the idea is to “integrate the culture into the worship as much as possible . . . so people can own this as their church.”

Reuben Fast Horse, who grew up on the Standing Rock reservation and was part of the group that sought to bring the Lakota traditions into the Mass, wanted the church to have Indian depictions of Jesus.

While traveling, he had seen renderings of Jesus as a Hawaiian and, in Alabama, as a black.

“Why not us? Why can’t we have a Native American image of Jesus Christ?” he asked.

Until religion and Jesus are depicted in Indian images, “Christianity will always be foreign . . . will be the white man’s religion,” said the Rev. Martin Broken Leg, an Episcopalian priest and professor of Native American studies at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D. “We can only approach Scripture out of who we are ourselves.”

In addition to representing Jesus with different skin color and physical features, Broken Leg said, the stories should be culturally adapted: For example, instead of depicting Jesus on the cross, he could be shown in a sun dance ceremony, a ritual of personal offering.

Phyllis White Eyes-DeCory is the director of a Rapid City, S.D., task force working on a model for combining native traditions and Catholicism. The model includes using traditional incenses such as sage, cedar and sweet grass, native music and the sacred pipe ceremony, she said.

It is Lakota-oriented, but White Eyes-DeCory said the group is “pioneering this for all Native Americans.”

The task force is awaiting approval of the model by the bishop of the Rapid City diocese.

“It’s about time that we as native people are being recognized by the Vatican,” White Eyes-DeCory said. “We shouldn’t feel like stepchildren anymore.”

The Rev. Casimir Paluck at St. Peter’s said his congregation has doubled since adopting the Lakota liturgy. It is a way to repair the hurt done by the Catholic Church in the past, Paluck said.

That raises the question: Why would Indians want to observe Catholicism?

“I have come across a number of folks that are quite puzzled that there isn’t more hostility,” Broken Leg said.

Religion was used by the U.S. government as a way to indoctrinate Indians, he said. Tribal members were forced to give up their way of life, their customs and even their language.

But once those traditional ways of life were destroyed, the church became the easiest way to continue a spiritual way of life, Broken Leg said.

“Spirituality plays a really major role in Lakota life,” Fast Horse said.

Fast Horse, who is a culture teacher at Fort Yates, said he hopes that by bringing an “Indian flavor” to Catholicism, he can identify more with the religion.

He said he observes Catholicism because it was important to his grandfather, and because “when everything was dead or dying on the reservation . . . the church seemed to be an outlet.”