Monthly Archives: October 2016

October 4, 2016 · 9:51 am

A Call to Presbyterians to pray with the Oceti Sakowin for Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their supporters

Reprinted from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Native American Intercultural Congregational Support Web page.

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More than four thousand 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. The people, known as “Water Protectors,” have gathered in an effort to stop the Dallas-based company Energy Transfer from piping Bakken oilfield crude oil underneath the Missouri River, the main source of drinking water for the tribe. This project is known as the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline (DAPL).

Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe took the initiative in this witness to protect the land and water from environmental harm and to affirm tribal sovereignty. Support for the tribe’s efforts has grown and now comes from many tribes and peoples across the country and internationally, as well as individuals and groups concerned for issues raised by the DAPL.

As the witness continues, the Oceti Sakowin, Dakota Nation (Sioux Nation), has issued a call to prayer for October 8 through 11. The Oceti Sakowin consists of seven bands, the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota people. Within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Dakota Presbytery consists of congregations of the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota people in Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, and South Dakota.

Please pray for:

  • The earth and all the resources the Creator has provided;
  • Wisdom, courage, and strength for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and for its Chairman David Archambault and his family;
  • Strength and courage for the Water Protectors and their families;
  • Peace and unity at the camps;
  • The provision of food, water, and shelter and the meeting of other needs for the Water Protectors, particularly those who plan to witness in winter;
  • Wisdom and vision for the people working on the legal battles being fought to halt this pipeline and to honor the sovereignty of Native peoples;
  • Patience and a willingness to rely on nonviolence for the government and corporate authorities involved; and
  • The leaders of the Synod of Lakes & Prairies as they collect and discern where to use funds for the camps and the Water Protectors.

Those wishing to support the Water Protectors financially may send contributions to the Synod of Lakes and Prairies:

Synod of Lakes and Prairies
2115 Cliff Drive
Eagan, MN 55122
Make the check payable to: Synod of Lakes and Prairies
Note on check: Dakota Access Pipeline Acct #2087

The synod will send a confirmation to the donor that the funds were received and then information about where they were distributed. Please make sure to include your name and address on the check unless already printed on it.

The Office of Public Witness has created an action guide that provides advocacy points to contact Congress and the US Department of Justice.

In response to the situation at Standing Rock and other current instances of racial injustice, the Advocacy Committee on Racial Ethnic Concerns has issued a statement urging “our church and all of its members, but especially those who are white, to join us in breaking silence. Commit with us to raise our collective voice not just to proclaim the good news of God’s grace but to call out injustice, to call out the forces that threaten to tear us apart with xenophobic, racist, and Islamophobic rhetoric.”

Presbyterian Native Americans continue to monitor the situation and will provide updates on ways to support the effort at Standing Rock, and across the country, to protect water, land, and tribal rights and to maintain harmonious relationships with the earth.

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The Oceti Sakowin call to prayer is for four days, recognizing that when the Dakota (Sioux) people pray they view the world as having four directions. The four winds come from the four directions, with each direction having a meaning and color associated with it. Where the medicine wheel lines cross symbolizes all directions. The four directions would relate to the four days, October 8 through 11, in this way:

October 8: West (Black) is the direction of the setting sun, the end of each day. It signifies the end of life. The west is also the source of water: rain and rivers, streams, and lakes. The west is vital because without water there can be no life.

October 9: North (Red) brings winter’s cold, harsh winds. These cleansing winds cause leaves to fall and cover the earth under a blanket of snow. Animals or people who have the ability to face these winds, like the buffalo who faces its head into the storm, are said to have learned endurance and patience. The north generally stands for the discomfort and hardships people experience. It represents the cleansing people endure and the trials people undergo.

October 10: East (Yellow) is the direction from which the sun comes. Light dawns in the east in the morning to mark the beginning of a new day. Then the light spreads over the earth. Light helps people see things the way they really are and can be the beginning of understanding. East also represents the wisdom that helps people live good lives. Traditional people rise in the morning to pray facing the dawn, asking God for wisdom and understanding. Many churches were built with the front facing east.

October 11: South (White) is the color of the southern sky when the sun is at its highest. South stands for warmth and growing. From the south come warm, pleasant winds. When people pass into the spirit world, they travel the Milky Way’s path back to the south, returning from where they came.

This information comes from The Four Directions posted by Akta Lakota Museum & Cultural Center.

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October 1, 2016 · 3:35 pm

Presbyterian advocacy group issues challenge to ‘raise our collective voice’

From the Advocacy Committee on Racial Ethnic Concerns of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns calls church to action

Press Release | ACREC

The Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns (ACREC) calls the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to embody what it has confessed, “that the church as the possession of God must stand where the Lord stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged; that in following Christ the church must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others. Therefore, we reject any ideology which would legitimate forms of injustice and any doctrine which is unwilling to resist such an ideology in the name of the gospel.”
– Belhar Confession

People of color in the U.S. are being killed by police in disproportionate numbers because of the color of their skin, their race, and ethnicity. We condemn and lament the continued and routine killing of unarmed people of color particularly African American men and call for full investigations in the police killings of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Tyre King in Columbus, Ohio.

People of color in the U.S. live under surveillance, the threat of deportation, and constant systemic violence. We are alarmed by the Obama administration’s continuing pattern of deportation and family separation. We are alarmed by the ways in which police and ordinary citizens are deputized, formally and informally, to perpetuate this culture of surveillance and violence. We are alarmed by the persistence of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic rhetoric and policy proposals abounding in the current presidential campaign.

People of color in the U.S. are being attacked and criminalized for their courageous stands against police violence, greed, environmental injustice, and treaty violations. We condemn the use of militarized private contractors to remove the Native Americans encamped at the confluence of the Missouri and Cannonball rivers seeking to stop the development of the Dakota Access Pipeline that threatens water, earth, and indigenous sacred spaces.

People of color in the U.S. are reminded daily in explicit and implicit ways of the hold white supremacy has over the soul of this nation. White supremacy; as a church we must say it. It is white supremacy that lies at the root of the systemic violence that kills, suffocates the life, limits the mobility, and creates the logic for the policing and detention of people of color in the United States.

Given this reality, ACREC calls the members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to leave the comfort of their buildings to put their bodies on the line as co-conspirators in a movement for transformation, to stand for reparative justice instead of cheap reconciliation, to join communities of resistance, declaring that all people are created by God which means uttering without equivocation that Black Lives Matter!

We call the members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to support the efforts of those gathered at Standing Rock to protect the water, the land, and the generations of people whose lives are threatened by the Dakota Access Pipeline expansion.

We call the teaching elders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to not just lament and pray for change but to challenge the members of their congregation to acknowledge and confess our participation in systems of oppression and to lead them to work for justice in and outside of the church.

We call the ruling elders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to exercise their spiritual and ecclesiastical leadership by creating and formulating ways for their congregation to engage in actions – economic and programmatic – that interrupt white supremacy.

ACREC strongly encourages the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and all of its members to join the mobilization of 5,000 prayers and/or actions around the world calling for water rights, clean air, and the restoration of the earth and its peoples by participating in the International Days of Prayer and Action with Standing Rock (October 8-11, 2016).

ACREC also strongly encourages the congregations and mid-councils of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to support the newly established Freedom Rising Fund created as a result of an action taken by the 222nd General Assembly (2016). This fund will support specific actions, “not just in word, but also in deed, to address and improve the worsening plight of the African American male.” Congregations and mid-councils are asked to direct a portion of the Peace and Global Witness Offering to this fund.

Finally, we urge our church and all of its members, especially those who are white, to join us in breaking silence. Commit with us to raise our collective voice not just to proclaim the good news of God’s grace but to call out injustice, to call out the forces that threaten to tear us apart with xenophobic, racist, and Islamophobic rhetoric. May we have the courage.

Buddy Monahan (Chair, ACREC)
Thomas Priest Jr.(Vice Chair, ACREC)

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