PAST 7321 (Veronas) Contemporary Issue Facing the Church: Indigenous Mission

Michael Odegaard

Post-Colonial Approaches to Mission is about as contemporary of an issue as

any facing the Orthodox Church today. With only four votes in opposition from English colonies: the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in 2007 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), however in 2010 the UNDRIP was adopted by the U.S. Obama Administration, the same year the esteemed Allan Nevis Prize for US Historical Scholarship was awarded by The Society of American Historians to the Native Hawaiian Dr. Noelani Goodyear for her dissertation expounding on the literature generated by the rst encounters of indigenous Hawaiians and Europeans. In 2011 Sarah Vowells Unfamiliar Fishes popularized Colonialism as Incremental Imperialism as a New York Times Bestseller subject. Indigenous North American communities have recently been at the forefront of the antifracking movement, opposing the use of controversial drilling techniques for natural gas extraction that pollute ground water supplies. Headline space in the 2013-2014 Overseas Ministries Study Center (OMSC) Study Program is given to a seminar to be held this weekend entitled Indigenous Initiatives in Mission, with an explanation of how using indigenous languages and local resources in ministry counters neocolonial missionary impacts and creation of dependency. Though we think of Fr. Michael Oleksas documentation of Native Alaskan Orthodoxy as a model of success, we must beware of lazy tokenism here since many of the symptoms of cultural genocide we associate with Native Americans are among our Alaskan brothers and sisters. We are often ignorant of the suffering of indigenous communities that remain where we live. ! Though all are threatened by extinction, some American indigenous nations have

realized a surprising level of success in their language revitalization efforts, thanks in

PAST 7321 (Veronas) Contemporary Issue Facing the Church: Indigenous Mission

Michael Odegaard

part to heroic volunteer and professional efforts of faculties of Indigenous Language Revitalization and Language Planning at several western North American universities led by the University of Hawai"i, Northern Arizona University, University of Minnesota, and the University of Victoria. Albert Schultzs Voices of Eden: A History of Hawaiian Language Studies (1994, University of Hawai"i Press) identies an important reconciliatory role that churches may play in this language revitalization process. When in 2005 I was asked by the then Dean of Sts. Constantine & Helen Cathedral of the Pacic the Rev. Dr. Fr. Nicholas Gamvas to translate the Divine Liturgy into the Hawaiian language so that he could serve the local Honolulu Native Hawaiian community there once per month, I began to realize my own responsibility in indigenizing Orthodox Christian worship in the Hawaiian context. Hawai"i is an American state that has two ofcial languages, English and Hawaiian, so considering Metropolitan Phillip of the American Antiochian Archdioces teaching on Fidelity that includes a chapter on Fidelity to Place which is relevant to Orthodox mission, an ethic of indigenous language missionary purpose is now growing in the American Orthodox churches. Orthodox Christians are becoming aware of this most marginalized cohort of American society and have responded through domestic mission efforts in concert with YOCAMA and the Native American Orthodox Christian Fellowship. ! Orthodox missiology is informed by the distinction between enculturation of the

Gospel contextually (to preserve indigenous culture) and acculturation, or genocidal forced assimilation. American Calvinist-inspired missionary schools in the American West sought to prepare indigenous persons for Manifest Destiny through genocidal English-only education. Similarly and for the same ends, but also due to the legislated

PAST 7321 (Veronas) Contemporary Issue Facing the Church: Indigenous Mission

Michael Odegaard

banning of Hawaiian language from public education and governance after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, in Hawai"i the number of Hawaiian-speaking persons gradually decreased during the period from the 1830s to the 1950s. Hawaiian was essentially displaced by English on six of seven inhabited islands due to Social Darwinistic racial attitudes and linguistic apartheid regulatory policies tied to the States planned economic development. Informed today by three generations of genocide theorists, including Raphael Lemkin and Robert Jaulin, revitalization efforts in Hawai"i are now systematic in scope. ! Aware of the cultural impacts of unregulated free market enterprise, the 1960s

and 70s witnessed resistance to the effects an English-speaking economy represented to Canadas French language community as a force to assimilate the French-speaking people. The resulting Quebeois sovereignty movement was resolved by recognition of Quebecois linguistic rights, and the adoption of the Canada Ofcial Languages Act that guarantees respect for linguistic minorities. Now a generation later, Canada has grown from a country where English predominated to one that is proud of its two ofcial languages, with support for bilingualism at an all time high. It was also during the 1970s era of civil rights movements that the spiritual values of traditional Hawaiian ecology were discovered by Americans, and these cultural values even found a professional voice in governances environmental regulatory mission. ! Over the last few decades, as an unanticipated result of the success of their

language revitalization movement, Hawaiian culture has demonstrated its resiliance, in its ability to adapt and evolve, through its blending of traditional and western technologies and sciences. A glance through a few pages of the companion volume to

PAST 7321 (Veronas) Contemporary Issue Facing the Church: Indigenous Mission

Michael Odegaard

the Hawaiian Dictionary, M!maka Kaiao, A Modern Hawaiian Vocabulary (2003, University of Hawaii Press) accomplished through the work of the K#mike Hua#lelo Hawaiian Lexicon Committee of the Aha Punana Leo and the Hale Kuamoo, will easily conrm this fact, and today speakers of Hawaiian apprehend and interpret complexities of contemporary urban life in the Hawaiian language. In 1976 the University of Hawai"i began to offer Bachelors Degrees in Hawaiian Language. In 1978, at Hawai"is rst Constitutional Convention, Hawaiian was established as an ofcial language and its study to be promoted by the State. In 1984 the "Aha P$nana Leo began the rst Hawaiian immersion school, and two years later, the 1896 ban on Hawaiian language media was lifted by the State legislature. In 1990, the Hawaiian immersion schools nally began to receive public funding. Now you can bank and watch the news on television in Hawaiian which today is used to explain mathematics and physics, political and social sciences, urban design, engineering, geography and medicine, in addition to theology and law. ! Various data sources help us assess the size and location of the Hawaiian

language community. Per Wikipedia, the number of Hawaiian-speaking persons as a growing population, citing conservative estimates of speakers at 2,000 (Lyovin, 1997) to a high of 24,000+ (US Census, 2010). Organized in 1918 and today the most widely respected voice of the community, the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs recently

PAST 7321 (Veronas) Contemporary Issue Facing the Church: Indigenous Mission

Michael Odegaard

adopted resolutions urging the State to require study of Hawaiian language as a condition for public school graduation, and a recent survey estimates of the 530,000 persons who self-identify as Native Hawaiian, 10% can speak the language and 90% want to speak Hawaiian. The University of Hawai"i at Hilo estimated that in 2010 as many as 12% of Native Hawaiians spoke Hawaiian at home. Based on this estimate, along with US Census Data maps, not only do all four Hawai"i counties have at least 1,000 speakers of Hawaiian, but eight subdistricts will also have the same: on O"ahu, the Wai"anae, "Ewa, Kona and Ko"olauloa districts; on Maui, the P$"oli Komohana district, and on the Island of Hawai"i the Hilo, Kona and Puna districts.

PAST 7321 (Veronas) Contemporary Issue Facing the Church: Indigenous Mission

Michael Odegaard

Five of the above districts have K-12 immersion schools and present the best potential locations for indigenous mission, those being Ke Kula "o Samuel M. Kamakau and Ke Kula Kai!puni "o "#nuenue in the K%ne"ohe and Kona districts on O"ahu and Ka "Umeke Ka"eo, Ke Kula Kai!puni "o N!wah$kalani"%pu"u and Ke Kula Kai!puni "o "Ehukaimalino respectively in the Hilo, Puna and Kona districts on the Island of Hawai"i. Additonally, the Kanu o ka "#ina K-12 Hawaiian language immersion school is in Waimea between Kona and Hilo districts on the Island of Hawai"i. Only the Hilo district has two K-12 immersion schools, representing the highest concentration of Hawaiian speaking people in the state. ! Inspired by the conversion story of Henry "&p$kaha"ia, New Englands rst

missionaries to Hawai"i arrived in 1819 after the indigenous overthrow of the traditional kapu system (though some aspects of the system are recognized today as being essential to environmental conservation and sustainability). Though missionaries have been both blamed and praised for the current dire situation indigenous Hawaiians face, today 80% of Native Hawaiians have a relatioship with Jesus Christ, whether this be in the context of traditional Nicene faith, pentecostal or Mormon communities. In all situations, there has been some degree of blending of Hawaiian customs with their respective faiths. ! Hawaiians who are loyal to their traditional Hawaiian sensibilities will naturally

n!n! i ke kumu (look to the source) of their faith in Holy Orthdoxy for its purest and most correct form; though small, this number is growing in spite of ethnic xenophobia among the cradle Orthodox. In contrast to the gnosticism that characterizes much of western Christianity, some of the earthier aspects of incarnational Orthodox worship will

PAST 7321 (Veronas) Contemporary Issue Facing the Church: Indigenous Mission

Michael Odegaard

be recognized as culturally appropriate to a new breed of cultural practitioners of indigenous arts, such as hesychasm, the use of holy images in worship, and the sense of Gods immanence and ...lling all things. Hawai"is last queen, the beloved Lili"uokalani whose Christian spirit of forgiveness and nonviolence inspired many beyond Hawai"is shores, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, lived her last years next to the Episcopal Cathedral when, beginning in 1916, it hosted the Islands rst Orthodox priest Fr. Jacob Korchinsky who knew the Queen, and both of whom mutually said of eachother that they have a deep love for God. Hawaiians and Orthodox, whether they be from Greece, Serbia or Palestine, already share many perspectives that come from their being ancient indigenous cultures. ! As the Hawaiian language community reestablishes itself and general

competence in Hawaiian increases, an indigenous Orthodox Mission in Hawai"i will require clergy who are competent in the spoken Hawaiian language. Considering the vast amount of literature to be translated into Hawaiian, a Hawaiian language monastery is needed. An Orthodox understanding and support of indigenous peoples, while at the same time transguring and establishing their cultures, may even yield fruit that will bless the whole Church. One of the blessings of making disciples of all nations is hearing, in return, the Gospel in ways we have not yet imagined ...so that our joy may be complete.