It’s no secret that I love Querida Amazonia. I’ve noted over and over again that it is a key document regarding contemplation in the world today. One thing that I don’t think I’ve specifically commented on before, though, is this. In his Introduction to the post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Pope Francis notes the following:

Everything that the Church has to offer must become incarnate in a distinctive way in each part of the world, so that the Bride of Christ can take on a variety of faces that better manifest the inexhaustible riches of God’s grace. Preaching must become incarnate, spirituality must become incarnate, ecclesial structures must become incarnate. (QA 6)

In just the previous paragraph, Pope Francis had remarked that if he was addressing Querida Amazonia “to the whole world,” it was in part “because the Church’s concern for the problems of this area obliges us to discuss, however briefly, a number of other important issues that can assist other areas of our world in confronting their own challenges” (QA 5).

If I take these two statements together, I come up with some interesting questions. Just how much of Querida Amazonia can be “translated” and “localized” to another region? Is my region one of them? What would it look like to edit Querida Amazonia so that it is written for my own context? Could I run that experiment? What would the result be?

Well, when I ask these questions, I find that I am interested in trying.

If I’m going to give this a try, the place to start would be a consideration of where I am—what my own region is. I don’t live in South America. I live in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. If I’m adventurous, I can actually say that I live in Wabanaki territory. Another way to express that is to say that I live in the Dawnland. The Indigenous people of my area, the Wabanakiyik, are the “People of the Dawn.”

The Dawnland region is “a multinational and interconnected whole” (QA 5). Its Indigenous peoples are the five Nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy: Mi’kmaw (Micmac, L’nu), Wolastoqey (Maliseet, Skicin), Peskotomuhkati (Passamaquoddy, Skicin), Penawahpskek (Penobscot, Eastern Abenaki), Abenaki (W8banaki, Western Abenaki). It’s also, of course, a particular ecological zone with its own features and contributions to our planet. The entirety of the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick is encompassed by the Dawnland, as are significant portions of Québec (Mi’kmaw and Wolastoqey territory in the Gaspésie and Abenaki territory just north of the Green and White Mountains states). In the United States, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are part of the historical Dawnland. Basically, that’s the area I’m thinking of applying Querida Amazonia to.

So, like the Pan-Amazon, the Indigenous space in which I live is a cross-border and multinational (in alternative parlance: binational + multi-tribal) whole. Maybe this isn’t a rare thing today. The recent XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (the Synod on Synodality) actually identifies an emerging call for an “exchange of gifts and search for the common good within large transnational and intercultural geographical areas”[1] and refers to any instantiation of these exchanges as an “example of newness and hope.”[2] In other words, larger ecological-cultural geographical areas—like the Amazon, the Mediterranean, and the Congo, but not only these—should find models of shared discussion and organization. Well, actually, the Synod on the Pan-Amazon already looked into that. And it produced its own final document, to which the Holy Father added his own apostolic exhortation.

If I had the time and resources, I would like to rewrite the entirety of Querida Amazonia in a way that resonates with my own region. Maybe one day I will. It would be a big project but a worthwhile one. To be sure, some paragraphs would require more adaptation than others. But I think that virtually all of its themes are relevant in some way.

For this post, I want to run an experiment. I’m going to rewrite a small sample of the apostolic exhortation: the section on the prophecy of contemplation (QA 53–57), a text which has been foundational and programmatic for this blog, and the related section on paths of inculturation in a particular region (QA 70–74). This will help me get a better grasp of the local stakes—and local voices—involved in these issues in my own area.

In the following, anything that I have added or modified is underlined. (If it’s not underlined, that means that this is the original text of Querida Amazonia.) Some of the changes are references to local authors, especially local Indigenous poets. Other changes are from Pope John Paul II’s 1984 apostolic journey to Canada, particularly his stops in the Dawnland, and to Pope Francis’ 2022 “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada. I have also a few added quotes from more recent magisterial documents, which I think help the flow of the text. There is also one reference to a document of the USCCB. The rest of the time, I am just altering words that refer to the Amazon or the Pope so that they become local to my own place and are expressed in my own voice.

Overall, I think I make not many changes. Yet the whole text comes into my own context.

The fact is that one can incorporate into the text of Querida Amazonia local authors and the Popes speaking to a different regional situation. This gives good evidence that, while we do not need “imitations of models imported from other places” (QA 77), Querida Amazonia is flexible enough to become “incarnate” in a new place (cf. QA 6).

I hope that this exercise is inspirational for others. It has certainly been illustrative for me. I can start to see that there is a way forward here—a way to truly believe that Querida Amazonia was addressed by the Holy Father “to the whole world,” not in every detail, but certainly as a model of proceeding when “other areas of our world” must “confront[…] their own [related] challenges” (QA 5).

Querida Amazonia becomes Beloved Dawnland

53. Many people today find themselves “unable to face the grief and despair that rises up within them in the face of such suffering. As a result, they tune out and fill their time and their minds with illusions to silence the cries and numb the pain.”[3] We let our consciences be deadened, since “distractions constantly dull our realization of just how limited and finite our world really is”.[4] From a superficial standpoint, we might well think that “things do not look that serious, and the planet could continue as it is for some time. Such evasiveness serves as a license to carrying on with our present lifestyles and models of production and consumption. This is the way human beings contrive to feed their self-destructive vices: trying not to see them, trying not to acknowledge them, delaying the important decisions and pretending that nothing will happen”.[5]

54. Following Pope Francis, we would do well to observe that each distinct species has a value in itself, yet “each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost forever. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right”.[6]

55. From the Indigenous peoples of this continent generally—and especially from the Wabanaki peoples of this particular place—we can learn to contemplate the land and not simply analyze it, and thus appreciate this precious mystery that transcends us. We can love it, not simply use it, with the result that love can awaken a deep and sincere interest. Even more, we can feel “intimately bound to the soil, the forest and the sea.”[7] Yes, those are the right words. We can feel intimately a part of it all and not only defend it. Indeed, this dual suggestion to love and feel belonging to the land is not peculiar to the Church. It is expressed, too, by Indigenous voices local to this place:

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.[8]

Recognizing these obligations we have as Wabanakew family members, the Dawnland will once more become like a mother to us. For, in the words of Pope Francis to the entire People of God, “we do not look at the world from without but from within, conscious of the bonds with which the Father has linked us to all beings”.[9]

56. Perhaps we can linger on the “natural beauty which is part of the charm of this area”[10] and “the beauty and goodness that guided God’s hands in creating it.”[11] We can awaken our God-given aesthetic and contemplative sense that so often we let languish. The contemplative and the aesthetic go together. When they are combined, we no longer proceed “as if all that is beautiful in nature, all that is worth going a thousand miles to see and feel and enjoy, were wrapped up in the hide of a moose, or under the scales of a casual trout to fill one’s belly.”[12] Rather, contemplative beauty and belonging transcend mere utility. Those who have been seized by them know that “if someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple”.[13] On the other hand, if we enter into communion with the earth, the air, the forest, and the waters, our voices will easily blend with their own and become a prayer:

O Holy Spirit whose eyes I see
If I ask.
His face I see on the cloud
The voice so gentle in a soft breeze.
The mantle of his cloak on the green.
The dust I would wash off his feet
If he asked.[14]

This interior conversion will enable us to weep for the Dawnland region and to join in its cry to the Lord.

57. There is an important “tenderness of Jesus for all the beings that accompany us along the way”.[15] He said: “Five small winged ones could be traded for two stones, yet Creator cares for each of them” (Lk 12:6).[16] God our Father, who created each being in the universe with infinite love, calls us to be his means for hearing the cry of the Dawnland. If we respond to this heartrending plea, it will become clear that the creatures of the Dawnland are not forgotten by our heavenly Father. For Christians, Jesus himself cries out to us from their midst, “because the risen One is mysteriously holding them to himself and directing them towards fullness as their end. The very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence”.[17] For all these reasons, we believers encounter in our land a theological locus, a space where God himself reveals himself and summons his sons and daughters.

[…]

70. For the Church to achieve a renewed inculturation of the Gospel in the Dawnland, she needs to listen to its ancestral wisdom, listen once more to the voice of its elders, recognize the values present in the way of life of the original communities, and recover the rich stories of its peoples.

No matter how tall or keeled over by the elements,
roots join, knuckle to knuckle, telling stories of

erosion and of days past. Of the shoreline that
used to be, crumbled. Of the legs of relatives who

used to stride and skirt the edges, vanished now.
Tree limbs and arms thrust high-high,

fingers bare, tense and taught, fanning out in all
directions, like a scene of liberation.[18]

In the Dawnland, there exist great riches predating contact with the Basque, French, and English seafarers. These riches are hard to circumscribe. They include those highlighted by St. John Paul II: “an acute sense of the presence of God, love of your family, respect for the aged, solidarity with your people, sharing, hospitality, respect for nature, the importance given to silence and prayer, faith in providence”[19]; “an ability to discover [God] in creation… a sense of gratitude for the land”.[20] They also include those mentioned by Pope Francis: “hospitality and welcome … the mystique of togetherness… learn[ing] how to walk together.”[21]

71. The Wabanaki peoples of the Dawnland express the authentic quality of life as wl8wzow8gan, “good living”. This involves personal, familial, communal, and cosmic harmony.

“But what does it mean to be happy?”

Yon was taken aback. He had never described to anyone what it meant to be happy.

“For me, being happy means being grateful (content) to be here and to live. It’s having Ola with me and knowing that she loves life, too. It’s being able to find beauty in nature, the sky, and the stars.”[22]

Good living 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. Indigenous peoples give us the example of a joyful sobriety and in this sense, “they have much to teach us”.[23] Traditionally, 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.

Nature guides us all, if we are willing.
Her wisdom brutal, beautiful.
She asks only that we remember our place,
the gifts we are given.[24]

All these things should be valued and taken up in the process of evangelization.[25] Moreover, they should be set as benchmarks for settlers and newcomers in relating to the Wabanaki peoples as their elders in this place and as caretakers of the land.

72. In the spirit of the treaties that govern this land, we are called “to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them”.[26] Those who live in the cultural milieu of settlers and newcomers, expressed especially but not exclusively in city life, need to appreciate this wisdom and to allow themselves to be “re-educated” in the face of frenzied consumerism and urban isolation. The Church herself can be a means of assisting this cultural retrieval through a precious synthesis with the preaching of the Gospel.

73. Inculturation elevates and fulfills. Certainly, we should esteem the Indigenous mysticism that sees the interconnection and interdependence of the whole of creation, the mysticism of gratuitousness that loves life as a gift, the mysticism of a sacred wonder before nature and all its forms of life. To deprive ourselves of this vision would be an impoverishment. To deprive others would be a crime. To do so in the name of the Church would be a scandal.

At the same time though, we must remember the great dignity of the relationship with God present in the cosmos. In the hands of Wabanakiyik, this can be a strikingly personal relationship with a “Thou” who sustains our lives and wants to give them a meaning, a “Thou” who knows us and loves us.

You whose eyes are stars
look down
Here I am

You whose voice is like time
Sing me the four winds

You whose hands are clouds
Draw me your face

You whose heart is the tip of dawn
Invent me a new day[27]

74. Similarly, a relationship with Jesus Christ, true God and true man, liberator and redeemer, is not inimical to the markedly cosmic worldview that characterizes the Wabanaki peoples, since we “see him there at the edge of the woods.”[28] He is “lifted up before the whole of creation.”[29] He is the Risen Lord who permeates all things.[30] In Christian experience, “all the creatures of the material universe find their true meaning in the incarnate Word, for the Son of God has incorporated in his person part of the material world, planting in it a seed of definitive transformation”.[31] He is present in a glorious and mysterious way in the coastlands, rivers, forests, animal relations, and wind, as the Lord who reigns in creation without ever losing his transfigured wounds, while in the Eucharist he takes up the elements of this world and confers on all things the meaning of the paschal gift.

[1] Francis–XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, Final Document For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission (26 October 2024), 120.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Sherri Mitchell, Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2018), 25. The author is Penawahpskek.

[4] Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), 56.

[5] Ibid., 59.

[6] Ibid., 33.

[7] St. John Paul II, Radio Message Flying over the Gaspé (9 September 1984). The Gaspé is part of the Dawnland. It is Mi’kmaw territory in Québec.

[8] Shirley N. Hager and Mawopiyane, The Gatherings: Reimagining Indigenous–Settler Relations (Toronto, ON: Aevo UTP, 2021), 183. The speaker is gkisedtanamoogk, who though a Wampanoag man, has family ties to Mi’kma’ki and served as one of the co-chairs of the Maine Wabanaki–State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

[9] Francis, Laudato Si’, 220.

[10] St. John Paul II, Celebration in the Cathedral, Moncton (13 September 1984), 5. Moncton is in New Brunswick. It is in Mi’kmaw territory.

[11] Francis, Message to the 7^th Meeting of the Forum of Indigenous Peoples (10 February 2025).

[12] The Travel Journals of Tappan Adney, Vol. 2, 1891–1896, ed. C. Ted Behne (Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 2014), 66–67. Adney was from New York, but these journals were written during his numerous trips in Wolastoqey territory in New Brunswick. He became a staunch defender of the Wabanaki people later in life.

[13] Francis, Laudato Si’, 215.

[14] Rita Joe, “Weji-uli-Niskam (Holy Spirit),” in We are the Dreamers: Recent and Early Poetry (Sydney, NS: Breton Books, 2017), 17. The author is one of the most famous Mi’kmaw writers.

[15] Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum (4 October 2023), 1.

[16] For the Biblical quotation, I have substituted the First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021).

[17] Francis, Laudato Si’, 100.

[18] Samaa Abdurraqib, “Late Autumn Observing the Coastline of Beals Island,” in From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast, ed. Samaa Abdurraqib (Northfield, ME: NatureCulture, 2023), 4. The author is an African American woman who lives on Wabanaki land in Maine.

[19] St. John Paul II, Meeting with Native Peoples, Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré (10 September 1984), 3. Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré is a shrine in Québec, just across the river from the Dawnland. It is a pilgrimage site very dear to Wabanaki Catholics.

[20] St. John Paul II, Liturgy of the Word with the Native Peoples of Canada, Huronia (15 September 1984), 5. This is in Canada but not in the Dawnland.

[21] Francis, Meeting with Indigenous Peoples and Members of the Parish Community of Sacred Heart, Edmonton (25 July 2022). This is in Canada but not the Dawnland.

[22] Christine Sioui Wawanoloath, « La légende des oiseaux qui ne savaient plus voler », in Tsoutare’ : sept histoires contemporaines (Wendake First Nation: Hannenorak, 2019), 55. The author is Abenaki.

[23] Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (19 March 2018), 198.

[24] Mihku Paul, “Etiquette for Beginners,” in From Root to Seed, ed. Samaa Abdurraqib, 31. The author is Wolastoqi.

[25] Cf. Vittorio Messori and Joseph Ratzinger, Rapporto sulla fede (Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni San Paol, 1985), 211–212.

[26] Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), 198.

[27] Christine Sioui Wawanoloath, Dans l’oeil du lièvre : poèmes et images (Odanak First Nation: self-published, 2019), 29. The original French poem is this: « Toi dont les yeux sont des étoiles / regard en bas / Je suis là // Toi dont la voix est comme le temps / Chante-moi les quatre vents // Toi dont les mains sont des nuages / Dessine-moi ton visage // Toi dont le cœur est la pointe du jour / Invente-moi un nouveau jour ». As noted before, the author is Abenaki.

[28] Rita Joe, “He Is There at the Edge of the Woods,” in The Middle Years: Song of Eskasoni and L’nu and Indians We’re Called (Sydney, NS: Breton Books, 2024), 87. As noted before, the author is Mi’kmaw.

[29] St. John Paul II, Homily for the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross of Christ, Halifax (14 September 1984), 4. Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia, in Mi’kma’ki.

[30] Cf. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Journeying Together: Intracultural and Intercultural Proceedings Report (April 2022), 25: “Indigenous people’s relationship to the land highlights the spiritual connection with the Creator in a more visible and meaningful way, especially when we think of the phrase ‘God in all things.’ This is something Indigenous people have recognized for centuries.” St. Thomas Aquinas explains this truth in this way: “The threefold way that God is in things: one is common, by essence, presence and power; another by grace in his saints; a third in Christ, by union” (Ad Colossenses, II, 2).

[31] Francis, Laudato Si’, 235.