The Nativity of the Red Indian Babe Jesus

Currently in Canada, Native Americans (also known as First Nations or American Indians) cover 5.4 % of the total population; in Mexico 90 %, and in the USA 1.5 %.

Estimates of the numbers of Native North Americans at the time of the European arrival or invasion (beginning with Christopher Columbus in 1492) in what is now the United States and Canada vary between 1.2 to 12 million.

By the end of the 19th century the number of Native Americans had been reduced to 250,000, mainly through imported diseases, dislocation, slavery, mass murder and genocide. Many of the Native American survivors converted to Christianity. 

Despite this mass conversion to Christianity, a resurgence of Aboriginal faith is currently underway in the life of Native Americans. 

One of the many ways in which this resurgence is taking place is to assimilate the indigenous culture and spirituality of Native Americans to the Christian faith. 

We nevertheless should remember that many followers of Native American spirituality do not regard their spiritual beliefs and practices as an “organized religion” in the way in which many Christians do.

Their religious beliefs and life practices form an integral and seamless part of their very being regarded to be inseparable from nature, i.e., from the Mother Earth and the sky, and from wild animals surrounding their neighborhood. 

For many other Native Americans, their traditional beliefs and life practices are more important and more sensible than those of Christianity. Note the following two remarks uttered by two Native Americans:

“Rather than going to church, I attend a sweat lodge; rather than accepting bread and toast [sic!] from the Holy Priest, I smoke a ceremonial pipe to come into Communion with the Great Spirit; and rather than kneeling with my hands placed together in prayer, I let sweet grass be feathered over my entire being for spiritual cleansing and allow the smoke to carry my prayers into the heavens. I am a Mi’kmaq, and this is how we pray.” (Noah Augustine, from his article “Grandfather was a knowing Christian,” Toronto Star, Toronto ON Canada, 2000-AUG-09).

“If you take [a copy of] the Christian Bible and put it out in the wind and the rain, soon the paper on which the words are printed will disintegrate and the words will be gone. Our bible is the wind.” (A statement by an anonymous Native American woman).

 

The three iconographies presented here are the traditional Native American artistic expression of the Nativity of Jesus and the Holy Family. They give witness to the human face of the Sacred. The icons, imaged in the features of America’s indigenous people, reveal anew that sacred power which is believed to be enveloping the very being of all Native Americans. They celebrate the soul of the Native American as the original spiritual presence on this great continent; and as prophetic signs, the three paintings celebrate the reconciliation of the spiritual vision of Native and Christian peoples of this land.

The first and second paintings relate the nativity of the Native American babe Jesus and the visit of their three village leaders. The third picture depicts the Holy Family, painted by Fr John Giuliani. At the center of this picture is the child Jesus whose hands intertwine tenderly with those of his mother Mary and Joseph his father. Their gaze on the child is reflected onto us, the viewer, through his knowing innocence. (Source of the third picture: http://www.bridgebuilding.com/narr/ghol.html).