In October 2002, for the first time in 30 years, leaders of Native American tribes--North America's original inhabitants--in New York State met together at a planning session.
In October 2002, for the first time in 30 years, leaders of Native American tribes—North America’s original inhabitants—in New York State met together at a planning session. Since many of the tribes don’t believe in gaming on their land, they have refused for decades to even sit together. The tribal leaders themselves called the meeting historic.
What brought them together was a planning session offering public health programming for Native radio stations. The Seventh-day Adventist Church-sponsored program is called “Vibrant Native Life Radio,” and will be played on already existing tribal stations in the United States and Canada beginning May 6.
There are many tribal radio stations, but not enough programming, says Robert Burnette, director of the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Native Ministries in North America.
It’s been one year from concept to completion. “Good things take a while, I guess,” he says.
The Adventist Church’s Native American ministries—reaching out to indigenous people of North America—has been going full time since a church initiative in 1995. As a result, Adventism has now, in some way, entered every one of the more than 575 federally recognized native tribes in North America.
One of the biggest challenges native tribes face is diabetes. Some tribes have incidence rates of 90 percent. Health officials at Loma Linda University and Lifestyle Center of America were brought together with leaders of the Mohawk nation. Other nation leaders were invited to the meeting and said, “‘We want those done with our people too,’” Burnette adds.
Languages and dialects among tribes are diverse. The Navajo Nation in Arizona alone has 200 languages, and dialects within each one.
“It’s a lot of people to reach,” says Burnette.
“We’ve found tremendous success working with people in their culture,” he says. “I’ve never had a tribal leader, a nation leader, tell me ‘no’ about anything. They’re very open to having hope flow to their people.”
Many Native Americans live on Indian reservations—land set aside by the American federal government as that tribe’s nation. Some Native nations have built casinos in hopes of raising money to fight poverty.
“When you go back and look historically at when gaming really got going with Native America, it goes into the 80s,” says Burnette. “And that’s the same time that the Adventist Church leaders began to get Native ministries to flow.
“The church opened up and said, ‘Here is the gospel of Christ, here’s your hope.’ In this great controversy we’re all in, Satan offers money through gaming and says, ‘Here’s your hope.’ That’s our battle in Native Ministries.
“What’s the real hope for these people?” says Burnette. “Is it money, or is it the gospel of Christ?
“Tribal leaders, even those who’ve gotten involved in gaming, are finding that the answer is not money,” Burnette says. “It doesn’t take away the incidence of diabetes, suicide, alcoholism, and the despair among their people. The only thing that takes away that despair is a close relationship with their creator.”
Many outsiders may have misconceptions about Native American culture. The use of peyote, a hallucinatory drug, in religious ceremonies has only been around for about 100 years. Tribal dances have only been around for a few hundred years, Burnette says. The return of a creator is found in many prophecies of Native American culture. Early European explorers wrote in their notes that the native people kept one day in seven sacred. Burnette says this gives the Adventist Church a special opening to tell Native Americans of their own history.
Burnette wonders, however, if Adventists are living in a time when they’re not as excited about sharing the gospel of Christ as they could be. In the United States there are 574 tribes or nations within a 25-mile drive of 642 Seventh-day Adventist Churches, he says. “If those churches would have been on fire, the work [among Native Americans] would have been finished years ago,” says Burnette.
In the 1920s, Pastor Orno Follete contracted tuberculosis and was told by doctors to move to a drier climate. He moved to Arizona and saw the need for work among the Indians. He prayed to God saying that if his life was preserved, he would make it his mission to take the gospel to the Indians. He lived another 20 years and started what is known today as Holbrook Indian School in Arizona, now with some 80 students, and alumni selling their original artwork through the school.
Follete also began what is today La Vida Mission in Arizona, and Pineridge mission in South Dakota. He started the Mericopa Church south of Phoenix. The first evangelist he got to come through was H.M.S. Richards Sr., who baptized the first church members.
Burnette talks to people at the Mericopa Church who where there then and they say that back in the 1940s everyone in the area was an Adventist. Later, the funding for the pastor was cut and the church closed. That church was reestablished last year and now has 25 members. A school associated with the Mericopa Church has 13 students and 20 on the waiting list. There just isn’t enough room. All the students, grades one through eight, are in an old, beat-up trailer. There is one full-time and one part-time teacher there now. Burnette says it would take funding for another teacher in order to accept all the students who want to attend.
It’s a very rural area. “There is no other school around,” he says. “There are kids in third and fourth grade who’ve never been to school before. Sometimes it’s a problem.”
Southern Adventist University is conducting research on learning styles of Native Americans. A partnership with the university and a native education consortium are reviewing curriculum and procedures for Adventist Native schools.
For more information, visit www.nativeministries.org.