First born here; First Nations people. Why are they the heroic humble we cannot afford to ignore? They are our forgotten foundations we stand on, the people when they are blessed a whole nation can be blessed and free. Isn’t it all our redemption to honor them, to cover the wounds of their fallen? How can we bring healing to the nations through this and bring healing and restoration?

   

“And your people will rebuild the ancient ruins; You will raise up and restore the age-old foundations [of buildings that have been laid waste]; You will be called Repairer of the Breach, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.” ‭ISAIAH‬ ‭58:12‬ ‭AMP‬‬

     Living in South Africa 14 years, I’ve come to love a special people group. My leader of our organization comes from this tribe and many of my friends and those I reach out to come from this hospitable, flexible, funny, overcoming, bridge-building, passionate people the Khoi San. Over the years at reconciliation conferences in South Africa and America, I found First People’s story and oppression of the past were discussed and acknowledged and some healing has taken place but I saw the lack of hearing about reconciliation of Native Americans within America. Yes it is happening but more stories need to be heard. Whether it’s the Dakota oil pipeline that is being protested by many Indiginous American and still voices remain unheard of the First People out West in America of the sacredness of that water and land. Or whether it’s hearing and memorializing places and people in the past slaughtering or battles that wiped out whole communities. 

The Jewish people honored their firstborn. We must too. We as the Immigrant descendants came later to these places so it was not ours so we must make amends, restitution, and hear the stories and honor those lost and those speaking out! We must help give voice to the many who have seen oppression, been plagued by alcoholism and drugs in townships in South Africa, violene, poverty, and gangs, numbing some of the pain of past injustices. Land torn apart. People scattered. Treaties broken. Tricked out of safety and land. Disease came in to kill off whole populations with the Europeans. Don’t end with the guilt. What can we do to start healing a nation again and be part of the amends and restoration?

   So I researched the people group that lived on our land of my childhood where I grew up in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. My grandparents were poor immigrants from Poland and great grandparents on mothers side from Latvia and Germany. So we were not settled on this land generations but had many acres of it, 6 acres by fact. The Lenape lived here in their incredibly warm for winter and cool in summer wigwams built the Thohicken creek. I found history I never heard of in school, the gory betrayal and deception of Pennsylvanian government. The next lines are very gory and vivid but to reveal how things are still covered up and need of healing of atrocities I decided to copy the story. If you are from anywhere much less a Pennsylvanian or a Christian  it should shock you. Moravian missionaries shared the love of God with Beloved Lenape Indians and they were persecuted for defending and helping the Native Americans. The Lenape that came to know Jesus gave up their arms in nonviolence resistance. Here is the story,

“But this wasn’t the end of the road for the Indians. During the Revolutionary War, in September 1781, British-allied Indians, primarily Wyandot and Lenape, forced the Christian Indians and missionaries from the Moravian villages. They took them further west toward Lake Erie to a new village, called “Captive Town”, on the Sandusky River.

The British took the missionaries David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder under guard back to Detroit, where they tried the two men on charges of treason. The British suspected them of providing military intelligence to the American garrison at Fort Pitt. The missionaries were acquitted. 

(Historians have established Zeisberger and Heckewelder did keep the Americans informed of the movements of the British and their Indian allies.)
The Indians at Captive Town were going hungry because of insufficient rations. In February 1782, more than 100 returned to their old Moravian villages to harvest the crops and collect stored food they had been forced to leave behind. The frontier war was still raging. In early March 1782, the Lenape were surprised by a raiding party of 160 Pennsylvania militia led by Lieutenant Colonel David Williamson. The militia rounded up the Christian Lenape and accused them of taking part in raids into Pennsylvania. Although the Lenape denied the charges, the militia held a council and voted to kill them. Refusing to take part, some militiamen left the area. One of those who opposed the killing of the Moravians was Obadiah Holmes, Jr. Among his observations of the incident was that “one Nathan Rollins & brother had had a father & uncle killed took the lead in murdering the Indians, …& Nathan Rollins had tomahawked nineteen of the poor Moravians, & after it was over he sat down & cried, & said it was no satisfaction for the loss of his father & uncle after all”. After the Lenape were told of the vote, they spent the night praying and singing hymns.

The next morning on 8 March, the militia tied the Indians, stunned them with mallet blows to the head, and killed them with fatal scalping cuts. In all, the militia murdered and scalped 28 men, 29 women, and 39 children. They piled the bodies in the mission buildings and burned the village down. They also burned the other abandoned Moravian villages. Two Indian boys, one of whom had been scalped, survived to tell of the massacre.

The militia collected the remains of the Lenape and buried them in a mound on the southern side of the village. Before burning the villages, they had looted, gathering plunder which they needed 80 horses to carry: furs for trade, pewter, tea sets, clothing, everything the people held.

Although there was outrage over the massacre, no criminal charges were ever filed. However, the lesson was neither lost on the Indians, nor forgotten.
(The Moravians, the Shekomeko Indians and the Gnadenhutten Massacre,  Roberta Estes 5 years ago, nativeheritageproject.com)

    It is genocide equal to Rwanda or wars in Congo. Scandalous sickening bloodshed that should bring us to utter shame at our history. So i had to say something so something even little because I was distraught at the discovery, in utter disgust and anger at my states people. I was totally shocked and  I felt compelled to do anything, something, to repent for the Pennsylvania government that committed this horrible atrocity no matter how long ago and how small an action. They were innocent, peace loving, God seeking Lenape and slaughtered by PA militia, to be forgotten. They were mercilessly slaughtered in a in a church where peaceably praying and worshipping! If I can document this story to represent the need to hear the stories of the First people, listen to their voice, hear their wisdom of caring for the land, the beauty of their patience and peace loving heart; then I hoped to deposit a small drop in the bucket of healing. Tears come as I write this. Let it be healing teardrops for the Lenape people, for the Khoi San, for the Noma first people who stayed with Me during a Nations2 Nations conference in South Africa. We want to hear your precious voice, songs, languages, culture, heart! We want you to know the Love of Your Creator, healing of your youth, stories of the first days in your ancient lands we came lived and invaded. Your hospitality is great and you let your land become ours even though tricked out of land treaties and stolen by blood at times. We are sorry; we owe so much restitution, love, our very lives. 

There we reflect Jesus. ‭‭So I found out the Lenape nation website and wrote to one of the chiefs and asked for forgiveness on behalf of the Pennsylvanians who did this atrocity. I told him I valued this story and felt a need to be greater memorial.  I want their story to be heard more and a greater acknowledgement and restitution of this event and others which lead millions to die and be pushed out of their region most to Oklahoma. 

To my surprise a chief wrote back and replied. Thank you for this message. You do me great honor. He spoke about being an honorary Lenape whatever is that great honor which I was unsure. But wow, he was touched that I just took time to hear and acknowledge. Hearing stories is important for healing. That’s why we have memorials after people we love die and it starts the healing process. But there was no restitution or admittance of criminality. That is so sad. Our government should take time to acknowledge, admit great fault for those days long past, acknowledge atrocity and criminality to start, because it keeps us stuck  in no ability to fully heal. Also I felt a need as a Christian to repent for the ways that the Lenape in that massacre felt deceived by the white settler. He came to accept Christ, live in peace and not retaliate and he was slaughtered unable by conviction to act back in violence. I love this about Moravians, Mennonites, and Quakers. It would give the people though a bad taste in their mouth for fear it would happen again to be placed in a church and killed, women and children. I hate any violence; I lived through a war so I hate guns and warfare. So I would of taught the New believers the same way, loving enemies. The Lenape were peaceful mattered for faith and their culture. I see those 96 who died that day. I hear their blood that cries out for restitution, acknowledgement, more justice, restitution. This was a crime against humanity; this is greed and insanity of barbaric land thiefs.  But it was a small act of acknowledgement but hopefully a drop of healing in their bucket of tears. Do we see them? I know I can more.

This is a drop in the bucket of stories of war, and massacre of First People. And I tried to write Pennsylvanian government to get a response and see if more of a memorial and remembrance could be set up with no response. But we all can be a voice in some way and the teardrops will fill a bucket to bring living water to heal oppression of the past. 

Share this story and find out about First People where you live on their land, whether your ancestors pushed them off or not, befriend them, learn their stories, and gain from their wisdom, listen above all, understand, receive their love and hospitality. And give it back in restitution.  Acknowledge injustice. Don’t be silent. We can bring His healing to broken lands as we see where we defiled lands, people. 

Native Americans were portrayed as bitter merciless warriors in my textbooks growing up. What about yours? Many are and were peace loving dwellers of the sacred lands they loved but became desperate and fought to survive which many did not due to war and disease and land being stolen from and pushed out and slaughtered. My university team I ran with were called the Red Raiders. Yet there was a protest at the name at the end of my BA degree. And rightly so. It was not the Native people who raided but the European settler and colonizer! Let’s get this straight! I know why my alma mater now named our mascot the Shippensburg ships getting rid of raider connotation. It is only right. But a ship doesn’t sound fierce enough to wn a game. Oh well. 

When I helped in a refugee camp in Jordan one summer for Syrian refugees a few years back giving out blankets, mattresses, food and teaching sewing for work for ladies I met lovely people with lost dreams stolen who mainly lost their men in the war. Over tea and popcorn they offered us as it was barely what they had, they poured out their heartbreaking stories of their miracle escapes, of utter survival, of the recounts of where they lived and how they escaped, the bomb shelled pictures of their once stunning homes as many were wealthy before, and what happened to their missing husbands, fathers, uncles, or child victims of war. The most important thing and often only response in the moment was when visiting listen to their stories. You may not have words, but by listening to their stories gives them meaning dignity, healing, and restoration to pain. That they are seen and heard by a loving Savior too. There tears put into a bottle. Who will be around to hear them, see them? God can use you. When Hagar was forced to the desert, God told her that her son will live and He is the God who sees her, really sees her. The One who wipes tears from her eyes. Who do you need to see? It’s a start and if no one hears them then the cold piercing pains remunerate over in people’s heads with echo and no release. We can hear. Open our ears and hearts to cry with them. We can love. We can be Jesus compassion and heart. God will give leaves that will be healing for the nations. Will you be part of what He’s growing. 

“Fruit trees will grow all along this river and produce fresh fruit every month. The leaves will never dry out, because they will always have water from the stream that flows from the temple, and they will be used for healing people.” 

Also we can be His healing hands of bringing redemption to nations so they may be able to hear and see their Savior and no offense and bitter root obstructs their way to see Him our beloved Savior who died for our sins to cover offense, violence, bloodshed and to restore dignity, destiny, identity. 

“In the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There will no longer exist anything that is cursed [because sin and illness and death are gone]; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve and worship Him [with great awe and joy and loving devotion]; they will [be privileged to] see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be night; they have no need for lamplight or sunlight, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign [as kings] forever and ever.”REVELATION‬ ‭22:2-5‬ ‭AMP‬‬

God is highlighting this topic of reconciliation and justice in North America and among indigenous groups . This months article in Soujourners magazine called Becoming Unsettled spoke about these initiatives. You can create your own. Elaine is the author.