liturgy for indigenous peoples day

At the 2015 Upper New York Annual Conference, members participated in an Act of Repentance & Healing of Relationships with Indigenous Persons.  As fruit of that repentance, a resolution was passed to move away from honoring Christopher Columbus who treated Native Peoples cruelly and inhumanely and move to a place of honoring Native Peoples.  Turning away from our frequent refusal to listen to history from the perspective of Native Peoples, we understand that repentance is a choice to grow in the way we see ourselves and others.  We live in a spirit of repentance as we explore a change in how we tell and celebrate the story of the Americas. 
Upper New York Annual Conference offers this liturgy to all local churches for use on a Sunday near the weekend our country traditionally celebrates Columbus Day.  Let us re-purpose this holiday to honor Native Peoples.

Liturgy
 
[Adapted from A Liturgy for Native American Sunday by Betty Jacob]
 
Leader: For the unending baskets of food, coaxed from Mother Earth by the hands of her Native children; for potatoes, corn, beans, squash, peanuts and sweet potatoes;
 
People: For the skills in planting, care and harvesting taught freely to the Europeans, for all these things which brought health and growth to the populations of Europe and new settlers to American shores,
 
ALL: WE OFFER A SONG OF HONOR AND THANKS.
 
Leader: For the creativity and skill of Native hands; for designing canoes, snowshoes, toboggans; and inventing Lacrosse and hacky sack;
 
People: For rubber which spawned thousands of new inventions, for technology and industry which rose from those gifts,
 
ALL: WE OFFER A SONG OF HONOR AND THANKS.
 
Leader: For the making of medicines: for quinine, ipecac, curare, petroleum jelly, witch hazel and a host of medications;
 
People: For the medicine women and men who shared them freely,
 
ALL: WE OFFER A SONG OF HONOR AND THANKS.
 
Leader: For rivers and streams, passes and paths; for the path making and path taking of America’s first peoples, for their leading the newcomers across these paths;
 
People: For personal liberty; for freedom first experienced by European immigrants in the lodges and circles of Native nations, for the tribal democracy that gave birth to American democracy,
 
ALL: WE OFFER A SONG OF HONOR AND THANKS. ACCEPT, O GOD, OUR HONOR SONG, AND MAKE OUR HEARTS THANKFUL FOR WHAT WE HAVE BEEN FREELY GIVEN. MAKE OUR HEARTS HUMBLE FOR WHAT WE CONTINUE TO TAKE. MAKE OUR HEARTS THOUGHTFUL FOR GENUINE REPENTANCE LEADING TO ACTION. GIVE OUR HEARTS POWER AND PEACE TO DO AS YOU BID US, IN THE NAME OF OUR BROTHER AND SAVIOR, JESUS CHRIST YOUR SON, AND IN THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. AMEN

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