The Church Year

May/June 2005

Enmegahbowh: connecting the nations of God’s people

BY THE REV. JOAN LALIBERTE

A Collect for Enmegahbowh

Almighty God,
you led your pilgrim people of old
with fire and cloud;
grant that the ministers of your church, following the example
of blessed Enmegahbowh,
may stand before your holy people,
leading them with fiery zeal
and gentle humility.
This we ask through Jesus, the Christ,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God now and forever.
Amen.

Enmegahbowh is celebrated on June 12
in the calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts.

Imagine living in a world where there was no separation between religion and life. Imagine all your life being lived in prayer. Then, imagine learning of another way, a way brought by people very different from you. Now imagine finding yourself between and within both.

Two centuries ago, a Canadian Odawa man was reared in his mother’s Christian faith and his grandfather’s indigenous healing tradition. John Johnson Enmegahbowh came to the United States from Canada in 1832 as a Methodist missionary and a man well educated in scripture. In a move many of us can appreciate, he decided to quit the mission field and return to Canada.When storms on Lake Superior blocked his voyage, he saw himself as Job, trying to avoid Nineveh. Then his real work began.

Years ago, returning from a General Convention in Detroit, I drove through northern Minnesota and White Earth and Red Lake reservations. At the time, I felt overwhelmed by the immense forests and the wild rice country. This was the area Enmegahbowh had served. White Earth Mission began when he invited James Lloyd Breck to Gull Lake, where they founded St. Columba’s mission in 1852. After moving to White Earth, Enmegahbowh served his people there until his death in 1902. He was a man of peace who could bring not only his own congregation but Roman Catholic Metis and non-Indians to church when the bishop visited.

Looking at history, it seems the church was slow to recognize this incredible leader’s vocation by ordination. Bishop Kemper ordained him deacon in 1859, but he was not ordained priest until 1867. He was the first Native American priest in the Episcopal Church. It took that long!

Paul Mazakute, at the Santee Agency, was ordained two years later and wrote in his own language, “on August 15, the twelfth Sunday after Trinity, I was ordained priest and now I am going to serve my own people.”
David Pendleton Oakerhater, a captured warrior, would find his way from prison in St. Augustine, Florida, to upstate New York and a new road as a deacon. He would serve his own people faithfully at Whirlwind Mission in Oklahoma, even after the church that ordained him forgot to support him.

Each of these men bridged two worlds at a time when even church publications referred to Native Americans as savages. They survived a policy of genocide against their people. The roots of their native faith nourished the new understanding they embraced in Christianity.

Christianity arrived for the native peoples as a religion brought by conquerors. All too often, missionaries condemned native beliefs instead of listening and realizing how Christianity could be preached with respect. Perhaps it was easier to condemn out of ignorance.

Ministry isn’t done from a safe distance. Early missionaries had to live with the people they served. Those converted became the carriers of this new faith. Their dedication survived both the attentions of the larger church and its neglect.

When I read about Enmegahbowh or Mazakute or Oakerhater - men of three different nations - I see the faces of modern Shoshone and Bannock people who preach by their lives. In my years with them, I heard their families’ stories of fleeing in terror and hiding under stream banks to escape the United States cavalry. They told me how government agents had kidnapped children to take them away to boarding school and how their own grandparents or great-grandparents had hidden the children. They told me of more recent injustices involving land and resources.

They also showed me how the Gospel is lived out. Family is treasured. Generosity is still practiced in Indian country, and people share. Amassing wealth is highly prized in much of the world, and the rich are admired. Among the Shoshone Bannocks, such behavior is suspect, because good people help others and give unselfishly.

As we honor Enmegahbowh, I picture a cloud of Native Americans around him, unsung witnesses to Christ’s power and love.

May we respect them, and may our own Christian faith be as strong and as prayerful.