In the Catholic Church and some other Christian churches and communions, we are currently in the Season of Creation. In Canada, where I live, today marks the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (with Indigenous Peoples). These two frames of commemoration actually have something to do with one another. They’re very much related.

I’ve already touched on this in a previous post. I looked at some American-era reflections of Jacques Maritain. The most natural reading of the French Catholic philosopher would today suggest that the way forward for the beauty of the land is through an ongoing relationship with the Original Peoples of the land. There will be no appreciation, protection, restoration, and promotion of the beauty of creation—no creation care worthy of the name—while we collectively forget, or do worse to, Indigenous Peoples.

In the present post, starting from Indigenous voices, I’ll look at the matter the other way around. There is no reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples without reconciling with the natural world. And this demands, per Pope Francis and in concert with various Indigenous voices, what I would refer to as some minimum standards for the rest of us.

No reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples without reconciling with the earth

When, in 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave its report of 6000+ pages on the residential “schools” that First Nations and Inuit children were made to attend, an avalanche of facts, experiences, and perspectives was put before the Canadian public. Not that they shouldn’t have been known before. Not that they weren’t. But the collected truth-telling was monumental.

Amid all the aspects worth focusing on, remembering, and acting on, I haven’t been able to get out of my mind some words of survivor and Mi’kmaw Elder Stephen Augustine, who insisted that, according to Mi’kmaw and other Indigenous perspectives, “reconciliation will never occur unless we are also reconciled with the earth.”[1] Meanwhile, Cheryl Knockwood, another Mi’kmaw voice, has said: “For reconciliation to succeed, the first step is for Canada and the provinces to understand and respect the Mi’kmaw worldview, in relation to Mother Earth.”[2] These assessments I find haunting. They indicate a very much unmet challenge.

But maybe we could get rid of these concerns if we found them to be particular to a small subset of voices, a Mi’kmaw peculiarity. Then the difficulties might be easily discounted. Is that the case?

No, I don’t think so.

gkisedtanamoogk, a Wampanoag man (admittedly with family connections to Mi’kma’ki), expresses rather the same thing. Nobody, he says, is going to kick out settlers and newcomers. But we’ve got to get it through our heads that everybody love the land—truly, deeply, holistically, love the land, the waters, and the skies as the Original Peoples did and do:

It’s not about building the great ark and shipping everyone back to Europe or wherever they came from. It’s about how we live together in this shared space. For me, the ideal is for people to have the same love for the land, and for being part of the land, as we have. It’s on that basis that one can be here legitimately.[3]

Most telling about the scope of the concern, however, might be the contribution of Eduardo Duran (Tiospaye Ta Woapiye Wicasa), who literally wrote the book on the healing of intergenerational trauma in Indigenous communities. He specifies that “when the earth is wounded, the people who are caretakers of the earth also are wounded at a deep soul level.”[4] It’s hard to argue with that logic, and the Indigenous connection to the land, the waters, and the skies is apparent. There’s no denying, then, that Duran and others have expressed a serious problem. Reconciliation really isn’t possible without environmental attitude adjustment and justice.

None of this is to distract from the rest of the major work of commemoration, re-thinking, and action that reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples requires of the rest of us. But prominent among many Indigenous people is the conviction that active harm will never stop—because the need to take, control, use, consume, exploit, and extract resources and land will never stop—unless we adjust our attitude and consequent activity in regards the natural environment. You can’t reconcile without this. It will not work. It just won’t.

Accordingly, given that today is Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and tomorrow Mi’kmaq Treaty Day, I want to explore the bare bones of what Catholics should be learning from Indigenous Peoples on this topic. Bare bones—when I say this, I mean it. I speak only of the absolute minimum, the lowest contribution to listening and dialogue, the tiniest sliver.

My approach is pretty particular. I’ll look at the matter from within the context of First Nations and Native Americans with whom I have a bit more familiarity (you’ll notice some linguistic and geographical clustering). But I’ll take pieces here and there from different Nations and groups. I don’t think this is a bad approach. In the first place, this avoids the impression that I’m giving a systematic account of any particular Indigenous People’s worldview; I have no position to even suggest such a thing. But in addition, dipping into different perspectives has another usefulness. It locates relevant overlap:

while there can be significant differences in the multitude of Indigenous perspectives, there are also strong commonalities among them. Foremost, they are Earth-based, and rooted in a particular place.[5]

Finding particularity, we recover central commonalities. Ideally, the essential nugget should be considered in one’s own context. But let me relay some voices that have been heard by my own ears. Maybe they will mean something to you too. To mean something will be both a consolation and a challenge.

Our common home

I want to start each section with a reference to papal teaching, then show how this is a theme which we (Catholics) should learn, not just from the theories and reflections of non-Indigenous theologians, but from Indigenous voices also. This lends particularity to the teaching in our own land, not to mention might challenge the simplistic way we could be tempted to take the theology—or even the tendency to think the Western Church has been coming up with this entirely on its own, without inculturation and interculturation in dialogue with Indigenous Christians and other Indigenous interlocutors (which certainly isn’t the case).

The place to start is the centre. Pope Francis calls the earth our common home. The phrase features in the very subtitle of Laudato Si’. Of course, its origin is itself magisterial. The Argentine pontiff pulls it from his immediate predecessor’s message for the World Day of Peace in 2008: “the human family which dwells in that common house which is the earth” (no. 6).

Indigenous scholars and wisdom-keepers are often not far from the same metaphor or characterization. Cherokee theologian Randy S. Woodley notes that one plausible way to refer to the text of Genesis 2:4 is “the family tree of the heavens and the earth,” for the word usually translated as “generations” (NRSV, KJV), “account” (NIV), or “story” (NAB, NJPS) is used in the genealogies of patriarchs in Genesis and other families and clans later in the Pentateuch and means most closely “generations.”[6]

Without referencing Christian teaching, gkisedtanamoogk explains something similar. He says:

In Wampanoag country we know the land as Kautanitouwit. Freely translated, it means “the Creator’s House.” How can we own the Creator’s House? We were given the privilege of taking care of this House, we don’t own it.[7]

This house is common. Why? Because it is the Creator’s. If it’s his, that’s more than just an idea. It’s about what we do. Thus we come to how the way we live is bound up with what we already are thinking.

Good living

Everyone wants “the good life” of course. But everything depends on the sense we give to those words. Every Indigenous People that I have learned anything from teaches about “good living” in a way that sings largely the same tune. Speaking of the Indigenous Peoples of Amazonia, Pope Francis notes the value they place on

the authentic quality of life as “good living”. This involves personal, familial, communal and cosmic harmony and finds expression in a communitarian approach to existence, the ability to find joy and fulfillment in an austere and simple life, and a responsible care of nature that preserves resources for future generations. The aboriginal peoples give us the example of a joyful sobriety and in this sense, “they have much to teach us”. They know how to be content with little; they enjoy God’s little gifts without accumulating great possessions; they do not destroy things needlessly; they care for ecosystems and they recognize that the earth, while serving as a generous source of support for their life, also has a maternal dimension that evokes respect and tender love. All these things should be valued and taken up in the process of evangelization. (Querida Amazonia 71)

The “good living” of Indigenous Peoples features elsewhere in the same apostolic exhortation (QA 8, 26). It is a key theme.

Each component of “good living” that the Holy Father draws out will come out later in this article. But focus for the moment on the very notion in itself: good living. It matters that Indigenous Peoples often have a term for this—wrapping up a multiplicity of future implications and lateral concerns in a single concept. That says something essential about values. It speaks to what is important. We can see where cultural, spiritual, intellectual, and embodied focus lies. And Pope Francis tells us to pay attention to it.

Anishinaabeg Nations refer to “good living” as mino bimaadiziwin. I want to draw attention to some of this teaching, but following the lead of important Anishinaabeg voices, I don’t want to oversimplify it or have it end in a certain reductionism. Leanne Betasamsake Simpson, noting that she is herself a learner, not fluent speaker, of her language, offers some caution about the increasingly widespread use of these Indigenous notions:

As a concept, mino bimaadiziwin is commonly used in Nishnaabeg teachings. I worry though that it is becoming almost an overused and over simplified concept in Nishnaabeg scholarship particularly amongst non-speakers and cultural beginners… While I still find mino bimaadiziwin to be an important concept, I use it while keeping these observations in mind.[8]

Despite reservations, she explains her culture’s teachings. She explores deeper meaning and philosophical consequences:

Mino bimaadiziwin is a phrase that is used to denote “living the good life” or “the art of living the good life.” Winona LaDuke translates the term as “continuous rebirth,” so it means living life in a way that promotes rebirth, renewal, reciprocity and respect. It is my understanding that although there are many ways to live the good life and that within Nishnaabeg contexts, there is no dichotomy between the “good life” and the “bad life,” rather living in a good way is an ongoing process.[9]

There is an implicit vitality to the term. It connotes restarting, then restarting again, but within the perspective of the fullness of life that has not been snuffed out. Of course, that’s not to say that mino bimaadiziwin comes easily. Anishinaabeg tell stories “representing the ordinary human struggle to live a good life.”[10] Neither is good living an individualistic pursuit and realization. Anishinaabe-Métis lawyer Aimée Craft translates the term simply as “our collective well-being”:

We discover that without the balance of those relationships, none of us would survive. We do this [i.e., honour the relational balance] out of the love we have for each other (one of the Creator’s spiritual instructions), as well as for the purpose of working toward mino-biimaadiziwin, our collective well-being.[11]

Eva Solomon, an Ojibway woman and a Sister of Saint Joseph, speaks similarly, distinguishing the fundamental relationships by type:

The good life, then, is living this fourfold relationship in balance with Gitchi Manitou, self, others, and all of creation. In this light, Indigenous or Native ethics are always in terms of harmony, balance, and right relationship.[12]

In essence, the good life or good living comes down to a practical realization, in our life and the lives of our communities and collectivities, of this truth: everything is connected. But to Catholic ears, this too appears to be a bergoglismo.

Everything is connected

If we’ve read Laudato Si’, we know the refrain “everything is connected” (LS 16, 91–92, 111, 117, 120, 137–162, 240). To be sure, this isn’t something that Pope Francis has far from his mind when he exhorts us to listen to the knowledge, wisdom, perspectives, and experience of Indigenous people. As Nuu-chah-nulth scholar and Elder Umeek notes in one of the groundbreaking works of written Indigenous philosophy:

Nuu-chah-nulth peoples today, in concert with many other indigenous peoples, embrace the phrase that is variously translated as “everything is one,” “everything is related,” or “everything is connected.” These phrases resonate deeply with an indigenous ethos and lived-experience, just as poetry and music may resonate deeply with some people.[13]

We’re talking about a permanent resonance, a constant reverberation, a continual hum. I’m not sure if we can stress enough how much speakers of Indigenous languages point to the embeddedness of this truth in their self-conception and worldview. While Europeans and Euro-Americans might take a step back, reflect, and assert quite abstractly that everything is connected, this is a commonplace in many Indigenous lifeways. To explicitly state it is possible. But it is hardly as necessary. Even the structure of Indigenous languages themselves conveys the idea.

Sister Eva Solomon gives an example from Ojibway, a member of the Algonkian language group. It has to do with verbs:

The active verb form of the Ojibway language involved a continuous creative movement demonstrating the interrelationship between all things. It denotes the present state; of continuously living in the now; and the palpability of one’s lived experiences.[14]

In the same language family, Mi’kmaw functions analogously. One example is the way nouns are modified in all usage:

In Mi’kmaw, every thing or every person is spoken of in relation with something or someone else… Everything existed within a network of relationships and could not exist as a separate entity outside those relationships.[15]

Commonplace vocabulary and phraseology are also implicated, as Solomon indicates:

A word in Ojibway that is still used in the language or in translation N’Dinowaymaganug, meaning “all my relations” or “we are all related.” It speaks to a core value of the interrelationship of all things.[16]

This is probably a phrase you’ve heard before (in translation). It’s common to many First Nations and used, for example, to end one’s contribution in a Talking Circle, when holding a Talking Stick. It also makes its way into many other contexts. Easily neglected—but the underlying idea is profound. Umeek specifies:

Today, Raven, Deer, Wren, Wolf, Bear, Eagle, and the host of life forms that make up biodiversity on earth have a common ancestry. The phrase “all my relations” refers to this common ancestry. Despite outward differences each life form depends upon the others for wholeness and completeness. The apparent differences between life forms are real but not in any essential way. Community is a natural order of existence, and one of its functions can be to reconcile the apparent differences perceived among its members.[17]

We might quibble with philosophical notions about what it means for differences to be “real… in an essential way.” But setting aside the different meanings in different thought-systems, Umeek’s point is hard to miss: “Community is the natural order of existence.” We can’t do without the Creator, without each other, without all of creation. As Aimée Craft puts it: “As humans, we depend on a complex web of relationships in order to live well, to live our mino-biimaadiiziiwin.”[18] The more this moves to the forefront of our minds and interweaves itself with our patterns of thought and imagination, the better.

Philosophically, the interconnectedness of reality means certain options. Umeek is clear that Indigenous Peoples, or at least his own culture, knew full well about other ways of conceptualizing reality. But they rejected it. And they continually reject it. This is an option taken, in light of experience:

The Nuu-chah-nulth struggle towards wholeness meant a deliberate exclusion of any form of reductionism. In fact, any emphasis upon reducing the interconnected nature of reality was considered as a step toward weakness…[19]

Pope Francis, of course, similarly has it out for reductionism (cf. LS 92, 107, 112). But the trenchant terms of Umeek are worth pausing on. Where does the true weakness lie? he asks. Patently with the less complex understanding of reality, connected, as it is, to the more isolated desire to act on parts in order to own, use, exploit, and extract.

Umeek, ever the philosopher, compares his traditional thinking and praxis to contemporary ideologies:

Another purpose of creation is to foster wholeness or community, for that is the natural order of existence. Wholeness is not an ideology like socialism or communism but the very essence of life. Nor is this purpose restricted to human communities: It applies to all created beings.[20]

Ideology, too, is a leitmotiv of the current pontificate (e.g., Evangelii Gaudium 39, 56, 57, 61, 199, 208; Gaudate et Exsultate 40–51, 100–103). So, again, we might cross-pollinate our thinking and our action with interactions with and dialogue with Indigenous interlocutors and action-takers. So many of the concerns boil down to the same thing, though we might express them in a different cultural and technical idiom. And where we find the odd point of disagreement, the strength to continue the relationship—everything is connected—will surely increase our resolve all the more.

Concern for the seventh generation

Pope Francis, in his description of Indigenous conceptions of “good living” already mentioned the notion of caring for future generations. I’ve been writing for some time now, and you’ve surely been reading quite a bit too, so I’ll quote another passage where he says the same thing. The Holy Father notes that people today “are also concerned about what they will eventually leave to their children and grandchildren. These values are deeply rooted in indigenous peoples.” (LS 179) Indeed, the commonplace phrase in Turtle Island (North America) is to think of and act for the seventh generation—some 200 years down the line.

We could spend forever on this topic. The point is that relationships are not just lateral. They are temporally persistent.

My go-to word here is in Mi’kmaw. There is a single word that captures a lot: “netukuli’mk, sustainable hunting, fishing, trapping, woodcutting, gathering and organizing our travels to our winter and summer villages.”[21] The term refers to “collective beliefs and behaviours in resource protection, procurement, and management to ensure and honour sustainability and prosperity for the ancestor, present, and future generations.”[22] It is not individualistic. It is much broader in scope. 

We should not, however, view Indigenous generational sustainability as just another word for sustainable development. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson tells this story:

Our class was discussing what is meant by the term “sustainable development.” The scientist was explaining that it means meeting the needs (and wants) of humans without compromising the needs (and wants) of future generations. In other words, developing only to the point where that development starts to impinge on future generations. I asked Robin [an Elder] if there was a similar concept in Nishnaabeg thought. He thought for a moment and then answered, “No there isn’t.” He told the class that sustainable development thinking is backwards, that we should be doing the opposite. He explained that what makes sense from a Nishnaabeg perspective is that humans should be taking as little as possible, giving up as much as possible to promote sustainability and promote mino bimaadiziwin in the coming generations. He felt that we should be as gentle as possible with our Mother, and that we should be taking the bare minimum to ensure our survival. He talked about how we need to manage ourselves so that life can promote more life.[23]

The Western idea of development, it seems, gives too much place already to the mentalities of extraction and exploitation. That’s not to say development is entirely abolished in Indigenous worldviews. But the priority is certainly the opposite. The mentality is backwards. Allowing space for the flourishing of life and developing (mechanistic) processes for fulfilling needs and desires are two quite different approaches.

This assertion should interrogate us. We Euro-Americans are inclined to regard sustainable development with approval. But that may be insufficient, if not incorrect. As Pope Saint Paul VI once said: “All technical measures would remain ineffectual if they were not accompanied by an awareness of the necessity for a radical change in mentality” as regards production, consumption, contemplation, and the environment. Likewise Pope Francis has recalled that there is something important in “find[ing] joy and fulfillment in an austere and simple life, and a responsible care of nature that preserves resources for future generations” (QA 71). These are two sides to the same coin in the Holy Father’s commentary on (Amazonian) Indigenous lifeways. They are, too, in Simpson’s account of woodlands First Nations of Turtle Island. So, on many sides, Indigenous values challenge us. They tell us to expand our concern to what Greek tradition would call asceticism. There is space to be critical about whether asceticism is truly the starting point for what we call sustainable development. We can continually recall the radical change in mentality proposed to us.

Of course, the Indigenous notion of seventh-generational sustainability isn’t just particular to the Dawnland and the rest of the woodlands, here in the northeast of the continent, nor to the Amazon basin far to the south. If you accept the premises that we’ve discussed up until now—our common home, good living, everything is connected—you’re going to think about mentalities of extraction and exploitation, about states of desire and need. You’re going to find yourself stretching your concerns out in time also. The people alive now are connected to beings and states of affairs that will exist in the future. And this situation keeps repeating itself every time you think further and further ahead in time.

For example, run all the way over to the western coast, and you can find people saying the same thing. Sarah Augustine, herself a Pueblo (Tewa) descendant, says of the Yakama among whom she lives and works: “The elders instruct us: take just what you need. Leave plenty for future generations. This implies that life is interdependent; what I do has a direct impact on the lives of other creatures.”[24] The idea, the value, is immediate. Yet it looks far off.

At this point and on the topic of sustainability, or the seventh generation, we probably need to leave the realm of ideas and come back to storytelling, processes, and contexts. But this isn’t the place for that. There is a lot of detailed listening that needs to happen. It would—it will—take us forever and a day.

Conclusion

Wayne A. Newell, Peskotomuhkati, teaches readers about the phrase unci skat kew kisesinuhk. It means that two things appear to be in conflict but aren’t. The example he uses is his own traditional (Indigenous) and Catholic grandmother. She was both at once.[25] This has not been an uncommon duality of identities, especially with Wabanaki Peoples. But other Indigenous groups have found the same. At any rate, it issues a challenge.

Pope Francis, as I’ve written about at length, wants us to treat Indigenous Peoples as principal dialogue partners. More to the point in the present context, the Holy Father has both explicitly and implicitly exhorted us to engage with Indigenous sisters and brothers, both theoretically and practically, about care for our common home.

What I’ve outlined here is, as I stressed at the beginning, just the bares bones of a sketch of such a dialogue. We should never seek to acquire and appropriate Indigenous thought and present it as our own, nor should we ignore the difficulties we find. But we have to engage. If we’re not engaged, at least by the inclination of our heart, with the points raised here, then I daresay we’re not meeting the minimum standard.

And when we become, as we should, dissatisfied with a minimum standard, we should also aim to go farther. Fortunately, though, by the logic of the created world itself, if we take one small step, others will follow in its wake—for, as with the themes of creation care and reconciliation themselves, everything is connected.

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[1] Truth and Reconciliation Commission, A Knock on the Door: The Essential History of Residential Schools, edited and abridged (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2016), 156–157.

[2] Cheryl Knockwood, “Rebuilding Relationships and Nations: A Mi’kmaw Perspective of the Path to Reconciliation,” in John Borrows, Larry Chartrand, Oonagh E. Fitzgerald, and Risa Schwartz (eds), Braiding Legal Orders: Implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019), 111–118 (here, 112).

[3] Shirley N. Hager and Mawopiyane, The Gatherings: Reimagining Indigenous-Settler Relations (Toronto: Aevo UTP, 2021), 183.

[4] Eduardo Duran (Tiospaye Ta Woapiye Wicasa), Healing the Soul Wound: Trauma-Informed Counseling for Indigenous Communities, 2^nd ed. (New York: Teachers College Press, 2019), 17; cf. also 164–166, 179–180.

[5] Hager and Mawopiyane, The Gatherings, 186.

[6] Randy S. Woodley, Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview: A Decolonized Approach to Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), 57; cf. H. Daniel Zacharias, “The Land Takes Care of Us: Recovering Creator’s Relational Design,” in The Land: Majority World and Minoritized Theologies of Land, ed. K. K. Yeo and Gene L. Green (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020), 77–80.

[7] Hager and Mawopiyane, The Gatherings, 62.

[8] Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence (Winnipeg: ARP Books, 2011), 26n9.

[9] Ibid., 27n18. The internal reference is to Winona LaDuke, Our Relations: Struggles for Land and Life (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1994), 4, 132.

[10] Simpson, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back, 73.

[11] Aimée Craft, “Navigating Our Ongoing Sacred Relationship with ‘Nibi’ (Water),” in John Borrows, Larry Chartrand, Oonagh E. Fitzgerald, and Risa Schwartz (eds.), Braiding Legal Orders: Implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Waterloo, ON, Canada: CIGI, 2019), 101–110 (here, 108). The same translation of the term occurs on the article’s last page also.

[12] Eva Solomon, Come Dance with Me: A Medicine Wheel Practice of Anishinaabe Catholic Interculturation of Faith, New Paths for the Churches and Indigenous Peoples 1 (Toronto: Novalis, 2022), 45.

[13] Umeek (E. Richard Atleo), Principles of Tsawalk: An Indigenous Approach to Global Crisis (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 140.

[14] Solomon, Come Dance with Me, 86.

[15] Trudy Sable and Bernie Francis, The Language of this Land, Mi’kma’ki (Sydney, NS: Cape Breton University Press, 2012), 32.

[16] Solomon, Come Dance with Me, 42.

[17] Umeek (E. Richard Atleo), Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004), 22.

[18] Craft, “Navigating Our Ongoing Sacred Relationship,” 104.

[19] Umeek, Principles of Tsawalk, 140.

[20] Umeek, Tsawalk, 20.

[21] Stephen J. Augustine, “Negotiating for Life and Survival,” in Marie Battiste (ed.), Living Treaties: Narrating Mi’kmaw Treaty Relations (Sydney, NS: Cape Breton University Press, 2018), 16–23 (here, 18).

[22] Kerry Prosper, L. Jane McMillan, Anthony A. Davis, Morgan Moffitt, “Returning to Netukulimk: Mi’kmaq cultural and spiritual connections with resource stewardship and self-governance,” International Indigenous Policy Journal 2:4 (2011).

[23] Simpson, Dancing on our Turtle’s Back, 141.

[24] Sarah Augustine, The Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2021), 191. The author writes regularly for the Mennonite magazine Anabaptist World, and many of her articles touch on the same themes, often with connections to current events impacting or led by Native Americans.

[25] Hager and Mawopiyane, The Gatherings, 23.