Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour cleverly hidden at the intersection of religion, art, science, food, and politics. This is an open thread where we can share our thoughts and comments about the day. Today is Religious Freedom Day which celebrates the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom which became the basis for the religious freedom section of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The concept of religious freedom has not been applied to American Indians. Describing the founding fathers of the United States with regard to Indians and Indian policy, historian Frederick Hoxie, in his chapter on “Discussing Christianity and Religion,” in Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era, writes:
“They did not believe the young nation’s revolutionary commitment to the separation of church and state should be extended to relations with Native Americans. As a consequence, conversion to Christianity became an important component of federal policy, and federal dollars flowed to religious groups without any public protests.”
Christianity was seen as the primary force for “civilizing” Indians and the policy of the United States was to force Indians to become Christian. This included the banning of native religions, punishing those who participated in Indian ceremonies, and requiring attendance at Christian church services. Christianity required Indians to cut their hair, to live in houses, to speak English, to wear European style clothes, and to have only one spouse at a time. The United States funded the building of churches and religious schools on reservations.
In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant instituted a Peace Policy in which the administration of Indian reservations was to be awarded to Christian missionary groups. In his chapter in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, Vine Deloria points out:
“The two protections of the First Amendment were simply not a matter of concern when federal reservation policy was formulated.”
Sonciray Bonnell, in her Dartmouth College M.A. Thesis Chemawa Indian Boarding School: The First One Hundred Years, 1880-1980 summarizes Grant’s Peace Policy this way:
“The Peace Policy aimed to place Indians on reservations, provide agency personnel appointed by church boards of various religious organizations, provide churches and schools and authorize the president to appoint a group of philanthropists to a Board of Indian Commissioners whose responsibility was to review and administer Indian policy with the Secretary of the Interior.”
Under this policy, many reservations allowed only one Christian sect: all others were barred from proselytizing on the reservation. Since most of the reservations were given to Protestant groups, even when there had been Catholic missionaries working on the reservation for generations, the Catholic priests were removed from the reservation. In his 1922 book Indian and White in the Northwest: A History of Catholicity in Montana 1831 to 1891, Father Lawrence Palladino, S.J. writes:
“Without regard to the religious influences that had Christianized them, the tribes of Indians were parceled out among different denominations. Catholic Indians were confided to Protestant preachers; the Catholic missionary was debarred and driven off the reservations, and what good had been done by Catholicity was soon destroyed by contrary influences.”
Catholic historian James White, in an article in the Chronicles of Oklahoma, reports:
“By the terms stated in Grant’s policy, namely that missions should be allocated among the missionaries already at work there, Catholic officials expected to receive thirty-eight missions; instead they were accorded only eight, all of them in either the Rio Grande valley or the Pacific Northwest.”
Subsequently, Catholic missionaries began to be ordered off certain reservations. According to James White:
“Under the terms of the Peace Policy, a single religious group had a franchise over the evangelizing efforts on each reservation.”
In an article in the Chronicles of Oklahoma, Frederick Hoxie writes:
“Grant had based the civilization program on the work of religious groups, but from the outset jurisdictional squabbles between Catholics and Protestants had undermined its success.”
With regard to denomination, the greatest number of Indians were given to the Methodists while the fewest were given to the Lutherans. The tribes were parceled out to different religious groups without any consideration to previous missionary activity on the reservation.
Under the policy of faith-based reservation administration, Indians on many reservations were required to convert to Christianity. The traditional religions were not only discouraged, they were declared illegal and their followers could be punished severely. For those curious about what an American theocracy looks like, American Indian reservations provide many examples.
In 1883, the United States showed its commitment to religious freedom by passing the Indian Religious Crimes Code outlawing American Indian religions. American Indian religious leaders—medicine people—and people attending traditional ceremonies were simply jailed by order of the Indian agent. This law remained in effect until the 1930s.
In 1933, John Collier was appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Collier condemned the government’s prohibition of Indian religion, custom and dance:
“It was illegal, unconstitutional, and wrong, and it is not going to be done anymore.”
Collier ordered an end to compulsory attendance at religious services in government-run Indian schools. As a result, Collier was called an atheist and a communist and there was political pressure to have him removed from office. The Bureau of Catholic Missions, scandalized by John Collier’s acceptance of Indian religions, characterized him as communistic and circulated a questionnaire to collect data on defections to paganism which could be attributed to Collier’s announcements on Indian culture.
Over the past century, the battles for American Indian religious freedom have continued over issues such as the Native American Church (peyote), access to and respect for sacred sites, long hair, wearing Indian symbols, and treatment of American Indian remains. These are topics for another time.
Open Thread
This is an open thread—all topics are welcome.