Indianz.Com > News > Tim Giago: Traditional belief in the age of Christianity
Why did the Indigenous people convert to a foreign religion?
Notes from Indian Country
Thursday, June 17, 2021
It is written (Niehardt – Black Elk Speaks – 1932) that in the end, Black Elk converted to Catholicism and it is also well-known that Lakota Chief Red Cloud also converted to Catholicism and this brings us to ask: Why?
There have been many very traditional Lakota who never gave up their inherent spirituality for Catholicism or any of the other foreign religion that came from Europe. Crazy Horse, one of the truly great Lakota leaders, went to his grave still holding on to the traditional spiritual beliefs of his ancestors. Why did so many Lakota, Navajo, Pueblo, and other tribal people give up their centuries old beliefs and convert to a foreign religion?
Were the traditional religious beliefs of the Indigenous people so weak that its practitioners could give it up so willingly? Or were the persuasive powers of the missionaries so overwhelming that they could cause a people with spiritual beliefs much older than their own to toss them aside and embrace their religion?
This begs the question: How strong were the traditional beliefs of the Indigenous people? The Bible says that Christians felt so strongly about their religion they marched into the den of hungry lions singing the praises of their creator. We may never know how many Indians reacted in the same fashion when asked to give up their traditional beliefs and accept a new one. We do know that many Indians chose death before they would accept a new belief.
Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard with the Class of 1990. His weekly column won the H. L. Mencken Award in 1985. He was the founder of The Lakota Times, Indian Country Today, Lakota Journal and Native Sun News. He can be reached at najournalist1@gmail.com
Content © Tim Giago
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