CONCLUSION

Truth and Conciliation

To’aheed’lini baa shi’chiin. My paternal grandmother, May Casamero, was the daughter of Morgan Casamero. After surviving the Long Walk and the death camp at Bosque Redondo, he and his family returned to a tiny portion of our traditional lands and lived in a hogan situated in a canyon south of some beautiful red rocks that stretch for miles and can be found scattered throughout Dinétah. Dinétah is the home of our Tó’aheedlíinii bá shíshchíín people. It is bordered by four sacred mountains. To the east is Tsisnaasjini’—Dawn or White Shell Mountain (our colonizers call it Mount Blanca, located near Alamosa, Colorado). To the south is Tsoodzil—Blue Bead or Turquoise Mountain (our colonizers call it Mount Taylor, located near Grants, New Mexico). To the west is Doko’oosliid—Abalone Shell Mountain (our colonizers named it San Francisco Peaks, near Flagstaff, Arizona). And to the north is Dibé Nitsaa (Big Mountain Sheep)—Obsidian Mountain (our colonizers named it Mount Hesperus, part of the La Plata mountains).

My great-grandfather was born in the mid-1800s before the railroad was built, before Hwéeldi. I don’t know much about his life except for the lessons my grandmother repeated to my father. One of those lessons was, “Treat your horses well.” Horses were the major form of transportation for our people. They were used in herding sheep, hauling water, visiting family, and escaping danger. My first job, as a young teenager, was working for a rancher in New Mexico, taking care of his horses. I learned how to saddle them, exercise them, and even occasionally helped round up livestock with them. I imagine my nalii grew up in a similar way, but with even more of the traditions of our people. Greeting the morning sun with his prayers, growing corn, and herding sheep on horseback.

The high desert of the Southwest has a beauty that is unique unto itself and cannot be found anywhere else in the country. The horizon stretches for miles, and the sky seems to extend to eternity. In the mornings the sun rises behind the red rocks running from the northwest to the southeast. The placement of these rocks means that in the evening the setting sun not only lights up the vast sky, but it also shines brilliantly on the red rocks, lighting them up and making the colors on the ground nearly as brilliant as the colors in the sky.

It is an amazing view and can cause an observer to question which way to look. Do you turn to the west and watch the beauty of the sunset and the incredible colors of the sky, or do you look to the east and behold the brilliance of the red rocks, shining majestically like a precious metal? The red rocks are probably one reason Spanish explorers like Cortez, Juan de Onate, and others believed this area was laden with gold. It is most likely one of the reasons our colonizers, the European Americans, made the motto for the state of New Mexico “the Land of Enchantment.”

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 allowed the United States government to remove tribes from their lands in the east to more empty lands farther to the west. The language of “choice” is actually used in the legislation: “Such tribes or nations of Indians as may choose to exchange the lands where they now reside.”1 Choice was hardly the experience of the thousands of Navajo and Apache people whose crops were burned, livestock killed, and homes destroyed by Abraham Lincoln’s armies as he sought to ethnically cleanse the lands of what is now Arizona and New Mexico to make way for Manifest Destiny and the transcontinental railway. Choice was not what my great-grandfather felt when he was one of the ten thousand Diné people rounded up and forcibly marched from our traditional lands to Bosque Redondo. Fortunately, my great-grandfather was not one of the 2,300 people who died at this death camp, but that also meant he lived through five horrifying years of imprisonment, malnutrition, and the constant threat of execution until the treaty of Bosque Redondo was signed in 1868.

My great-grandfather and his family were fortunate to return from Bosque Redondo. Initially they lived in a hogan situated in some canyons south of the red rocks, but it was not long before they were forced to move once again. The US government claimed much of the land south of their newly constructed railway, and our family was forced to move. We eventually ended up settling near Marino Lake, an area about thirty miles north of the red rocks. This is where my grandmother was born and where many of my relatives, To’aheed’lini, reside today.

In 1881 the railroad was being built through the territory of New Mexico. Gallup, New Mexico, was founded “as headquarters along the construction right-of-way of the southern transcontinental route.”2 In 1896 the Christian Reformed Church purchased some land just east of Gallup. There they built a compound that served as a base of operations for their mission to the Indians of the Southwest. Their mission compound was located just south of where the red rocks end. On this mission compound the missionaries built a church. And in 1903 they opened an Indian boarding school. The approach of the mission reflected the social imagination of its time, which sought to kill the Indian in order to save the man.

By the late 1800s the United States of America had fully embraced the Doctrine of Discovery and its role as the next carrier of the mantle of Christendom. John Winthrop’s narrative of claiming the promised land (akin to the Israel of the Old Testament) and the building of a city on a hill had become deeply ingrained in the national consciousness and imagination. Americans across the continent truly believed this nation was blessed by God and had a manifest destiny to rule the continent from sea to shining sea. Like most Christian denominations, the Christian Reformed Church was no different. They arrived with a doctrine that allowed them to discover new lands. They constructed a mythology which allowed them to claim it. And they co-opted a theology of promised lands that allowed them to ethnically cleanse it.

However, there was a problem. Those damn Indians were not going as quickly or as quietly as most Christian Americans had hoped. By the end of the nineteenth century, the explicit manifestation of the institution of slavery had changed with the Emancipation Proclamation and the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment. The evil structure of slavery had been brought down, but the narrative of white supremacy continued and found expression in Jim Crow, which would eventually be replaced by the New Jim Crow. The evil systems were being dismantled, but the narrative continued to perpetuate new systems. And that was the dynamic around the Indian problem.

The evil social structure of explicit genocide and intentional extermination of Native people was being challenged. One of the reasons my Navajo elders were able to negotiate a treaty with the US Army was because images and stories of the horrid conditions and inhumane treatment of our people were becoming public. The army and its leadership had a public relations problem. So the explicit slaughter of Native bodies was stopped, but the narrative of white supremacy continued on and created new systems of oppression. The army addressed their public relations problem by agreeing to send our people back to a portion of Dinétah, the land in the general vicinity of our four sacred mountains. We did not get all of our land back, but some of it was returned in the treaty we signed with the US government in 1868.

One of the sections of land that we did not get back was the land to the east of Gallup. I was one of the last babies born at the old mission hospital run by the Christian Reformed Church east of Gallup. In 1971 this hospital was moved off the mission compound and into the limits of the nearby town. My mother, Evelyn Natelborg, worked at the hospital on the mission compound as a nurse. Her parents, John and Mae Natelborg, were lifelong members of the Christian Reformed Church. She originally came to the denomination’s Indian mission, Rehoboth, on her way to Africa. But during her stay she met my father, Theodore Charles. They fell in love and were soon married. She never left.

My father, Ted Charles, also lived on the same mission compound. He had recently completed his service in the US Marine Corps and was working at the CRC mission. His mother, May Casimero, was Diné, from the To’aheed’lini clan (where the waters flow together). She was a boarding school survivor born in a nearby community called Mariana Lake. My other nali, John Charles, was also Diné, from the To’adchini clan (Bitter Water). He too was a boarding school survivor who was raised more than an hour north of Gallup, in another area of our reservation called Blanco Canyon. My grandmother was one of the founding members of the Christian Reformed Church in Crownpoint, New Mexico. My grandfather was a former US government employee who later worked as a translator for the CRC missionaries serving at the CRC Indian mission in New Mexico.

My father’s parents lived on campus at the CRC Indian mission near us. When I was in the first grade, our family moved from the mission compound to a neighborhood on the west side of Gallup to a new housing development on the very edge of town. There was a lot of open, undeveloped land to the west, and the border of the Navajo Reservation was located only a few miles to the north. As a result, there was a lot of free space. My grandparents moved to that neighborhood with us and purchased a house right next door to ours. We did not live in hogans, but our front doors did face the east, just like the front door of nearly every house and hogan on the reservation.

Not long after we moved there, my grandfather, who had never owned land before, decided to plant corn in our backyard. Corn is sacred to our people and is one of the few crops that has any chance of growing in this climate. Gallup is located in the high desert of the Southwest, where the ground is dry, rocky, and hard, and there is very little rain and almost no irrigation. This makes growing anything difficult and requires that the ground be dug up and tilled quite deep. Every day my grandfather was out in the yard with a shovel and a pick, breaking up the ground, removing rocks, and planting his corn just as his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did before him.

As my grandparents grew older, I began sleeping in an extra bedroom in their house so that I could help them, if necessary, in the middle of the night. My grandparents purchased some land several miles outside the city limits of Gallup. This land was nothing special. It was located up in the hills about four miles south of the highway. “The land,” as my nali called it, was like most of the plots around there, off the grid and undeveloped. There were no houses, sheds, plumbing, running water, or electricity. It was just land, filled with trees, shrubs, rocks, and dirt. The road leading to it from the interstate wasn’t even paved. Over the years, down the hill, closer to the road, a few houses and trailers began popping up. Up the hill, there was almost no development. Frequently, usually on the weekends, my grandparents would take us up to the land. I’m not sure why. There was not much to do there, but my brother, sister, and I would ride our bikes, climb the trees, and hike among the ravines while our parents, grandparents, and other friends and relatives would sit under the trees and talk.

Later, after I had left for college, and my grandparents were older and needed more constant care, they sold the land and bought two more plots farther up, near the top of the hill. There, our family built a two-story hogan, large enough for my parents and siblings to live in, as well as room for my grandparents to have their own apartment downstairs. They moved there after I had left for college, so I never lived in that hogan. But I loved returning home for a few weeks at a time to enjoy the peace and quiet of the land. One of my favorite spots was behind our hogan, to the south. Because we lived at the top of the hill, and the interstate was to the north, all of the land to the south was undeveloped. There were no roads, no houses, no buildings, no lights. Nothing. Just forest for miles and miles and miles. But when you began walking south, fewer than two hundred yards behind our hogan, the trees suddenly broke and you found yourself standing on the edge of beautiful canyon. It was amazing. I was attending college in the crowded and busy city of Los Angeles, so I relished the opportunity to come home, visit my parents, walk out to that canyon, sit down on the rocks, and behold, in complete silence, the magnificent beauty.

In our hogan there is a large window facing north. The view is breathtaking, looking down the hill, over the trees, and with an amazing view of the beautiful red rocks off in the distance. When the sun sets in the west, the red rocks light up magnificently. My grandmother loved sitting in her chair, looking out that window. I knew she had grown up about forty miles to the northeast in an area not unlike this. And I assumed she loved looking out of the windows because of the memories that the beauty of this land brought back. But several years later, my father explained to me why she loved this land so much. While they were building the hogan, he would bring my grandparents up there to see the progress on their new home. My grandmother at that point was in a wheelchair, and he would have to push her chair through the dirt to get up to the house. On one trip, she became reflective as he was helping her out of the car. “You know,” she said to my dad, “my father, Morgan Casamero, your cheii, used to live in that canyon, the one just over this hill.”

At the publishing of this book it will have been ten years since the apology to Native peoples was buried in the defense appropriations bill and seven years since a group of 150 people from the grassroots effort gathered to publicly read it in front of the US Capitol. But not much has changed. President Obama left office without ever publicizing it. President Trump has embraced the narrative of white American exceptionalism in his campaign rhetoric, environmental policies, blatant racism and sexism, his nationalism, his border wall, and his unabashed love for Andrew Jackson. To this day, most Americans do not know about this apology nor about the Doctrine of Discovery. Our nation still has no clue how to deal with its past. But for myself, my family, close friends, and the 150 people gathered in front of the US Capitol that cold December morning, December 19 is no longer just a normal day. It is an annual reminder. A reminder to not get stuck in anger or resentment. A reminder to press on. A reminder that there is much work to be done.

George Erasmus, an aboriginal leader from the Dene people in Canada, says, “Where common memory is lacking, where people do not share in the same past, there can be no real community. Where community is to be formed, common memory must be created.”3 The United States of America has a white majority that remembers a history of discovery, opportunity, expansion, and exceptionalism. Meanwhile our communities of color have the lived experiences of stolen lands, broken treaties, slavery, Jim Crow laws, Indian removal, ethnic cleansing, lynchings, boarding schools, segregation, internment camps, mass incarceration, and families separated at our borders. Our country does not have a common memory.

The United States of America needs a national dialogue on race, gender, and class. A conversation on par with the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that took place in South Africa, Rwanda, and Canada. It must be an inclusive dialogue, not one that takes place in specific silos. And the church must be involved. But because the American church has so broadly accepted the heresy of Christian empire and because the Western church wrote the Doctrine of Discovery, the church is currently incapable of leading this dialogue. It needs to participate, but it cannot lead.

Suppose there are two families living next door to each other. One family regularly attends church while the other does not. David, the husband of the churchgoing family, is committing adultery with Eliza, the wife from the family next door. As a result, the second couple is experiencing problems in their marriage. Eliza’s husband, John, is unaware of the adulterous relationship and seeks help from a men’s ministry at a church in the community. The church leadership greets John with open arms and informs him that they have a thriving ministry for men, especially those struggling in their marriages. In fact, this ministry is led by a church elder who just happens to live right next door!

When the two men meet, David realizes that John, who is seeking help, is Eliza’s husband. But David has nothing to offer John. He cannot counsel him, he cannot comfort him, he cannot befriend him, he cannot even pray for him. The only role that David has in healing John’s marriage is to get out of Eliza’s bed.

Because the problems our nation are facing are systemic and corporate, because our problems are rooted in the Doctrine of Discovery and the heresy of Christian empire, and because the American church still broadly accepts the national identity of Christendom, the church in America literally has nothing to offer. Its only solution to our national problems is to “make the nation Christian again.” But that is precisely what caused our problems in the first place.

In the Old Testament book of Hosea, God commands the prophet, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the LORD” (Hosea 1:2-3). So, Hosea married Gomer. After giving birth to several children, Gomer returned to her promiscuous life on the streets, even working as a prostitute. Later the Lord commanded Hosea, “Go show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress” (Hosea 3:1). Hosea went back to the streets, paid for the services of his wife, and brought her home.

Jesus is the prophet.

The Western/American church is Gomer.

Our adultery is with the empire.

And our only path to healing is through lament and learning how to accept some very unsettling truths.