Calling on congregations to offer an educational event exploring The Doctrine of Discovery, the September edition of Facing Racism from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) asks participants to consider the history of exploitation of Indigenous Peoples in the United States.
On Thursday, April 20, at noon EDT on the PC(USA)’s Facebook page, as part of its “Third Thursdays” series, ruling elder Rick Ufford-Chase, the Presbyterian Mission Agency’s associate for interfaith formation and co-director of the PC(USA)’s Stony Point Center, welcomed as his dialogue partners Chief Dwaine Perry and Two Clouds, both of the Ramapough Lunaape Nation, which is located about thirty miles northwest of New York City in the Ramapough Mountains.
While water protectors, encamped near the confluence of the Cannon Ball and Missouri rivers in North Dakota, endure brutal winter weather, Elona Street-Stewart, synod executive of the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, recounted her mid-November trip to the encampment, describing the camp, the work to prepare for the north’s raw winter, the sacredness of water and the role of the church.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders have been standing in solidarity with Native American tribes and groups protesting the construction of the Dakota access pipeline and its encroachment upon Native American lands.
While the setting sun cast long shadows over the land, residents of the Sacred Stone Camp gathered near a community campfire as volunteers nearby prepared the evening meal. Children and a handful of dogs welcomed the night as if it were day, running and playing, oblivious to the changing weather and the cause that brought so many to the Missouri River in Cannon Ball, North Dakota.
More than 20 representatives from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) joined a 500-person-strong gathering of clergy and lay leaders at the Oceti Sakowin prayer camp yesterday, adding voices of solidarity to self-described “water protectors” at the site and taking part in a ceremony repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery.
More than 4,000 people have gathered at Camp of the Sacred Stones, three separate prayer camps north of Cannon Ball, North Dakota, near the northern border of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s reservation.
As the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline continues near Cannon Ball, North Dakota, the Earth Care Team from the Presbytery of Northern Plains delivered supplies late last week to sustain those demanding an end to the pipeline’s construction.
For the Lummi Nation, proposed fossil fuel development, transport and export of coal and oil could drastically impact their way of life. The Native American tribe, located in western Washington State has been battling proposed terminals, oil and coal trains, and pipelines arguing that such projects create a tremendous environmental threat to their homeland and the region.
The Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in conjunction with the Rev. Irvin Porter, associate in the Office of Native American Intercultural Congregational Support, issued a statement today in support of the Standing Rock Sioux protest of a crude oil pipeline set to skirt the northern border of the tribe’s reservation lands. A breach, they say, is a threat to the Missouri River, the source of the tribe’s drinking water.
