Reservation Lessons - i

It wasn’t terribly late, but it was dark over the reservation that night, scattered lights here and there where Navajo homesteads glitter against the vast reaches of the uncluttered desert landscape. A ridge of mountains to the west was barely visible, and, I'll admit it, for a white man somewhat unsure of himself in Indian territory, I wasn’t feeling totally at home.

I was returning from an old church basement, where I'd been sitting with a half-dozen members of a large Navajo family, listening to them--mostly Grandma--tell her story, a story rich with love and grace.  I was on assignment: write stories about elderly Navajo Christians and their relationship to a century-old mission boarding school, Rehoboth, just east of Gallup.  And I’d been listening.

What Anglo Christians like me are discovering these days is that the story of any North American Indian boarding school, no matter how righteous in intent, cannot be told in triumph or joy.  Those histories are heavily burdened with real pain.  One prominent Navajo leader, a Rehoboth graduate, told me that the attempt to teach Native people a new way of life, as all boarding schools once intended, carried an unmistakable corollary.  Indian kids learned, even if it were never stated, that their culture of origin, in this case, the Navajo way of life, had to be left behind.  Kids learned, he said, that the values with which they were reared, and the families that taught those values, were essentially worthless.  That lesson was criminal, a sin.  Today, we call it a kind of abuse, cultural abuse.

My own grandfather was on the “Heathen Mission Board” of the denomination he served and of which I am still a member, the Christian Reformed Church in North America.  For thirty years in the early 20th century, the Rev. John C. Schaap, a deeply pious man of God, supervised the operation of the Rehoboth boarding school, a school that has—as do all Indian boarding schools—a deeply troubled past.  Here in my study hangs an ancient and tattered Navajo rug, a gift to him, years ago, for his long service on that Board.  I too am part of this story.  But then, it seems to me that all of us are.

    That Sunday night, I’d worshipped in an old church, the very first my denomination had built on the reservation, almost a century ago.  With twenty people or so, we’d brought praise and thanksgiving to God, prayed and sung old gospel hymns—in English and Navajo.  Then, along with just a few of the folks, we’d retired to the cool of the basement, where for three hours or so, I asked questions and listened to stories.

I don't know that I've ever heard a man's confession of adultery before and then turned to look at his faithful wife, who, it seemed, wouldn't address me or him or even what he'd just confessed with her eyes.  It was a moment I won't forget.  He’d told me a long and tearful story about coming to terms, a few years back, with what he’d become—too much drink, too many drugs, too much unfaithfulness.  It was an immensely moving testimony. . . . .

(finish tomorrow)