This summer my family drove to South Dakota. The drive took us through several Native Indian reservations. For the most part all we could observe was the reality of desolated, isolated rural poverty. The ethnic cleansing and land theft policy of our American history has taken its toll and moves the heart beyond sorrow. There is, as far as I can imagine, no realistic hope for the resurrection of the Native peoples. Although there are small pockets of optimism and an occasional success story, Native culture and a Native contribution to a reconciled and restored future, barring an act of God, seems to be historically, and humanly, impossible. Theologically speaking it appears that the Great Spirit has abandoned Native Americans.
When I talked with family members, admittedly all white folk, mostly farmers, what I heard was a resigned refrain that if Native Indians were to have any hope of a future they would have to create that hope for themselves. No amount of government funding would create new pathways.
Indeed, according to my family members, government money was now part of the problem. They insisted that a welfare mentality had eroded Native motivation to work and produce. They were quite vocal that government funds rarely funneled down into the budgets of actual persons in need. Instead, the money disappeared into bureaucratic corruption, and within the territorialism of the tribal council itself.
I don't know. All I know was that the areas looked forlorn and desolate. All I know is that gang culture is sweeping the Pine Ridge reservation. All I know is that here in Seattle, alcoholism, homelessness and chronic financial dysfunction are characteristic of a way of life that discourages all of us who want to see a restoration of Native accomplishment. Indeed, relationally speaking, few churches have any real connection to Native persons. And those that do are not able to assist the renewal that is needed and the revival that must come if Native peoples are to experience a resurrection from death.
I am haunted by the notion of God's apparent abandonment of Native peoples. Five hundred years of relentless oppression have not generated new light for Native peoples. How long until the darkness passes? How long do we have to wait until an authentic saving movement of liberation and restoration is created? Is such a hope too much to ask of the God who boasts that Pharaoh is nothing, and that even the dead can be raised? Is such a yearning for justice beyond the capacity of God to inspire and to empower?
Of course Native Americans are not alone in this theological conundrum. One could look at the Palestinian people and ask the same questions. One could examine the long misery of the Congo and despair equally. Where is God, when God alone is the only hope? The question unnerves me.