Race, Religion, and Reconciliation
Naomi Hatfield
The author of our Final Thoughts column for Fall 2007 is Naomi Hatfield ‘07 of Okemah, Oklahoma. While at Dartmouth, Naomi majored in Spanish modified with Linguistics. She was active in Native Americans at Dartmouth and Christian Impact, and served as an International Student Mentor. She is currently living and working as a campus minister at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England.
Like many college students, I have struggled to find my identity. I ask myself, “What do I really care about? What defines my life? What causes me to want to live my life the way I do?” Reflecting on these questions, I have discovered two crucial aspects of my life that define me: being a Native American-Lenape/Delaware and being a follower of Jesus Christ.
Growing up, I lived on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico. I knew I was a Native American, but I often struggled to identify that way. I remember the younger brother of a Navajo friend of mine once took the hairs on my arm and began to twist them because it was strange for him to see a person with hair on her arms. Through my confusion and pain, I realized that although I considered myself to be like him, I was also different. I mean, come on! Who had ever heard of a fair skinned Native American with blond hair and blue eyes?
There were times when I would approach other Native students—friends of mine—only to be rejected and called names for claiming to be like them. Similar things happened when I told my white friends that I was a Native American. From childhood I could sense the tension between being a Native American and being white. And this raised more questions, such as “What does it mean to be a Native American? And who defines what a Native American is?”
I moved from New Mexico to Oklahoma in the summer of 1996. I left a place where I stuck out and felt judged for being so light-skinned to a place where almost everyone at school looked just like me. Oklahoma, being Indian Territory, has many people of mixed Native American and white blood. I never felt it necessary to declare my Nativeness, and neither did I feel pressured to hide my Native heritage. Actually, while living in Oklahoma I began to identify less and less with my Native American heritage and culture. However, it was during this time that I came to an understanding of who Jesus is and began to develop a relationship with Him. During this time, identifying as a follower of Jesus Christ became the most important aspect of my identity.
I was raised in a Christian home, but it wasn’t until my middle school years that I began to grasp what love and grace really meant. The verse John 3:16 came to life for me. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Now that was true love! God would allow His Son to die for me because the Creator of the universe loves me? It’s incredible!
After realizing that God really does love me and that Jesus died for me, I decided that I needed to take ownership of my faith and beliefs. It wasn’t enough for me to go to church or blindly trust what my friends and family believed; I wanted to know God’s love for myself! My passion to know God more personally grew throughout high school, and when I graduated there was no doubt that being a follower of Jesus Christ was the central aspect of my identity.
For a long time I considered being Native American and being Christian two completely separate compartments in my life; I never knew it was possible to reconcile them. Then one day in high school, my mother asked me not to use my Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB) card unless I desired to learn more about my Native heritage. (A CDIB card is a form of identification that Native Americans must have in order prove their Nativeness by their quantity of Native American blood. It also provides certain privileges within a tribe.) After almost a decade of ignoring my Native heritage, I began to wrestle once again with what it meant to be Native American.
While at Dartmouth, I began to better understand who I am as a Native American and what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. My freshman year, I tried to heed the words of my mother and got involved in the Native American community, but it reminded me too much of my elementary school years. I again felt judged for not looking or acting “Native enough,” and I didn’t want to be part of a community only to be an outsider.
In October of 2004, my sophomore fall, my mother’s father passed away. My Lenape heritage comes from my grandfather’s family, and his death caused me to realize how much I had missed during those many years of ignoring my Nativeness. It wasn’t until he passed away that I truly began my journey in learning how to reconcile the paradox of being a Christian and being a Native American. I remember my cousin and my aunt inviting my mother, sister, brother and me to burn sage as part of a traditional cleansing ceremony after the funeral. I was confused during the ceremony, but also amazed and grateful that God is bigger than one culture.
Going back to Dartmouth after the funeral sparked a new passion within me. I yearned to know God not only in a Western, Christian mindset but also through my Native culture. I asked God for the grace to truly value my heritage, and to recognize that He has deposited His image in every people group for the glory of His name. I have had to look at the history of both the Native Americans and the whites, and seeing the terrible things done “in the name of God” has been gut-wrenching! It is hard to reconcile these two worlds, knowing what has transpired between them. I have also found that history matters a great deal, because until I fully understood my ethnicity, I couldn’t start to answer my questions about being a Native American Christian.
I have discovered that my job is to praise and worship God wherever He places me. God calls us all to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. For example, John 4:19-23 describes a cross-cultural interaction between Jesus—who was a Jew—and a Samaritan woman. Due to the long-standing animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans, Jesus was crossing major cultural boundaries by consenting to speak with the woman.
Looking at Jesus’s actions there, I realized that true worship is a power that leads to reconciliation. It is about focusing attention and affection on God the Creator. God is the God of all people; He is the One who has created all ethnic groups, tribes and nations, and His presence is always where people gather in His name.
Nevertheless, reconciling these worlds has been a challenge for me due to heartache, misunderstandings and disagreements with fellow believers and fellow Native Americans. But even though I have been hurt by their insensitivity, it is crucial to acknowledge that people are just people. They are not perfect, and this world is far from perfect as well. In order to reconcile the Christians’ and Native Americans’ differences, I’ve had to admit that mistakes were made, and then forgive those mistakes. Praise God that He transcends all cultures and all the stumbling blocks we build!
The journey of discovering who I am and what it means to be a Native American and a Christian will be a life long process. One important discovery I have made so far is that Christ must be my most important identity. Nevertheless, that does not mean that I ought to dismiss or reject my cultural identity. Jesus Christ asks us to surrender absolutely everything, but in so doing he does not wipe out our ethnic identity. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Praise God that He is a God of every nation, tongue and tribe!