Ep. 363 Chris Hoklotubbe & Danny Zacharias - Reading the Bible on Turtle Island: Indigenous Wisdom and Interpretation

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Chris Hoklotubbe and Dr. Danny Zacharias about their book Reading the Bible on Turtle Island and how Indigenous wisdom invites us to see Scripture through a different lens. We explore how the Bible, written by tribal people deeply connected to land and kinship, calls us back into right relationship with Creator, creation, and one another. Chris and Danny share stories that connect the Trail of Tears to the exile in Babylon, the teachings of Jesus to the call of Jubilee, and how truth-telling and reconciliation are part of our ongoing discipleship. This conversation challenges the transactional faith that has shaped so much of Western Christianity and reclaims a relational vision of faith grounded in love, harmony, and gratitude. It’s a reminder that reading the Bible through Indigenous eyes doesn’t just reveal something new about the text, it helps us remember who we are and how to walk the bright path of Jesus together.

H. Daniel Zacharias (PhD, Highland Theological College/Aberdeen) is a Cree-Anishinaabe/Métis and Austrian man originally from Winnipeg, Manitoba (Treaty One territory), with ancestors also residing in Treaty Two, Treaty Three, and Treaty Five territories. He lives in Mi’kma’ki (Nova Scotia) with his wife, Maria, and four children in Wolfville, NS. He is associate dean and professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College, where he has worked since 2007. He also serves as an adjunct faculty for NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community.

T. Christopher Hoklotubbe (ThD, Harvard) is a proud member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. He is the director of graduate studies of NAIITS: An Indigenous Learning Community, the first accredited Indigenous designed, developed, delivered, and governed theological institute. He is also assistant professor of classics at Cornell College (Mount Vernon, Iowa). He is the author of Civilized Piety: The Rhetoric of Pietas in the Pastoral Epistles and the Roman Empire, which was awarded the Manfred Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise. He and his wife, Stephanie, have two daughters and live near Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Chris & Danny's Book:

Reading the Bible on Turtle Island

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Transcript

Chris Hoklotubbe: 0:31

Our way forward of having life at its best together is by telling these stories of the goodness and the joy and the beauty that's out there, not just for indigenous flourishing, but for all our flourishing.

Unknown: 0:54

You Hello

Joshua Johnson: 0:57

and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, faith has often been used to erase culture, to separate people from the land, from their ancestors and even their own sense of belonging. But Chris Hawk to be and Danny Zacharias invite us to a different vision. In their book, reading the Bible on Turtle Island, they open a circle where story, land and Scripture meet, showing how the Bible itself is an indigenous text rooted in land, community and covenant. Chris and Danny draw from deep wells of indigenous wisdom, revealing a way of reading the Bible that is not about dominance or extraction, but about relationship, reciprocity and then restoration. They remind us that creation itself is alive with God's presence, that the Earth, the animals and the waters are not resources to be used, but relatives to be honored. They invite us to see how the teachings of Jesus, from Jubilee to the Sermon on the Mount call us back into right relationship with creator, with creation and with one another. So join us for a conversation that explores what it means to reclaim beauty and goodness in our traditions, to heal the fracture between faith and the land and to move from a transactional faith built on power to a relational faith built on love together, let's imagine what it might look like to walk the bright path of Jesus, grounded, humble and connected to all our relations. Here's my conversation with Chris Hawk the Tubi and Danny Zacharias, Chris and Danny, welcome to shifting culture. Thank you so much for joining me.

Danny Zacharias: 2:36

Thanks very much for inviting us. Yeah, we really appreciate being here.

Joshua Johnson: 2:40

You know, at the beginning of the book, you talk about the circle dance, and you're welcoming people to the circle. Can you welcome us to the circle? Can you just orient us to what we're going to be talking about and invite us into this circle dance,

Danny Zacharias: 2:55

yeah, well, I mean, I can invite you in by first telling you who I am and what we're doing kind of thing. So my name is Danny Zacharias, originally born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which is treaty one territory where my maternal ancestors resided for years untold, as well as other treated areas in Canada. But I live now in McMahon, which is the ancestral and unceded territory of the megamaw peoples. Now that's Nova Scotia today in an hour outside of Halifax, where I serve at Acadia divinity college as Associate Dean with my wife and four kids here and I also serve as an adjunct professor with Nate's indigenous learning community. And so part of what you hear in my introduction to myself is my heritage, my history, my theological history, and those things are kind of coming together in this book and discussion with you today, having grown up in kind of church adjacent until I was in my teens, but then embracing Christian faith in a family that largely didn't talk about our indigenous heritage because of discrimination that my ancestors received and later in life. Kind of post all of my theological education, post my PhD, or, sorry, maybe kind of mid PhD, where I started asking these questions again. What does it mean for me to be an indigenous follower of Jesus, and in the case of this book, what does it mean for me to think this way as a biblical, trained biblical scholar? How do I bring the tools that I have and engage this, this type of thinking, this type of worldview, these lifeways that I've sought to reclaim as part of my cultural heritage. So as we kind of enter that circle, this is the context of why this, this whole dance has started in the first place.

Chris Hoklotubbe: 4:46

Halito chimachikma, my name is Chris hocklow Tubby. I'm a member of the Chota nation, and I am a New Testament scholar by training. I currently live with my wife and two daughters outside of Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Lisbon, Iowa. I teach three quarters time with Cornell College, a small liberal arts college here in Iowa, as well as I am the Director of Graduate Studies for Nate's and indigenous learning community. And Nate's is proud to be the first indigenous design developed, delivered and governed theological institution to be accredited by the Association of theological schools. And I say that because Nate's was a real big part of my entry point into. To this project. So in graduate school, there was a large emphasis on how our social location informs the kinds of questions we bring to the text and the meanings we bring from the text. And so, you know, I really benefited from reading African American, Asian American, Latina, Latina interpretations of the Bible, but there wasn't very much on indigenous interpretations of the Bible. There were scatterings of such, but nothing that really focused on it in particular. And if there was pieces on indigenous Christianity, it was mostly theology or explaining indigenous theology to Christian audiences and talking broadly about it, but not deep engagement with biblical texts. So at some point I just thought, well, if I'm not finding the text out there, maybe God has invited me. Maybe the Holy Spirit is leading me to write something on this. And yet I didn't want to do this apart from community. And so that's what led me into Nate's, and also led me to meet Danny. And as soon as I met Danny and we shared our hearts of what our passions were, we said, why would we write this apart, like, why don't we write this together and make a project so much richer by including stories from Canada and the United States, which oftentimes our imaginations of indigenous experiences are just separated, but there's a lot of commonalities and a lot of richness by bringing these stories together, thus the project for doing a book on indigenous interpretations of Turtle Island

Joshua Johnson: 7:08

take me into then that social place and that the place that you're starting to engage the text from, and contrast that with a with a more normative thinking for most people that already live in North America that are not indigenous way of of engaging scripture. What was the difference because of your social location, than a white, European settler, North American interpretation of Scripture?

Chris Hoklotubbe: 7:47

So I would start that indigenous people have been reading the Bible and making meaning from it, from their social locations, from the very beginning of missionary contact. And a lot of these stories have been missed or underappreciated. And even to this day, when we were talking to indigenous ministers and leaders about how their cultures inform how they read the Bible, oftentimes they would say, Well, you know, it really does. I just read the Bible as is, right? Danny, actually, this is your story, right? You You spoke with someone who said, Well, I don't read the Bible any distinct way. But then they started talking about their dreams and how their dreams inform how they make meaning of the Bible. And you're like, oh, but that's an indigenous interpretation. And, you know, I was talking to this crow pastor, Kenny pretty on top Jr. And again, he was like, I just read the Bible straight forward. We just preach straightforward. But then I did this sermon where I was talking about the imagery of Jesus adopting us, imagery that's very powerful in Galatians as a metaphor for how we are made right with God, we participate in Jesus, and he brought it to this a crow ceremony. It's a ceremony that's really big for a lot of clains indigenous tribes, which is the adoption ceremony. And when they have their powwows or gatherings, in one of these moments, the music stops and there's an announcement that's made that says there's a lost child in the audience. And then when the dancers goes through the stadium and brings a family down, and then there's this beautiful adoption ceremony in front of everybody that a lost child is brought back into this family and is claimed as a member of the Crow Nation. And he's talking about this like, this is what Jesus does for us. Jesus is like this crow dancer who goes in and finds the lost sheep and brings them to the center, and there's this huge celebration that the Lost is found. And that just said, shivers down my spine, and I was like, this is beautiful and and this is one of the points we are trying to make in this book, is that the Creator, that God has been present with indigenous people from the very beginning, that they were not left without a witness to what a good, beautiful life looks like, that, what harmony looks like, what a balanced, right relationship with all our relationships look like. And so if we start with that premise, then our ceremonies, our stories, our values, our cultures, have the fingerprint of creator on them and are useful assets for our theological imagination that help us to unpack and see things that are underappreciated in the text, that have always been there, that we don't see with our 21st Century Western eyes, our Euro American trained eyes, and in many ways. Indigenous people today are much more similar in culture and context to the Galileans and the ancient Hebrews and in fact, the biblical scholarship. When we think about sociological interpretations that we try to do cultural interpretations, whether it's honor, shame or kinship, well, New Testament scholars are going to ethnographers and anthropologists, but where are they getting their models from? They're getting their models from indigenous people. So in ways, we're kind of reclaiming and naming what's always been done is that indigenous people have been contributing to indigenous interpretation for for a while, and we all benefit from it.

Joshua Johnson: 11:11

One of the things that I think has helped me in the past is actually viewing the Bible as an indigenous text itself, like it was written by indigenous people through their hands, telling the story of indigenous people and the land for a long time, how does that interpretation of the bible of viewing it as indigenous wisdom written for us by indigenous people help us see the Bible for what it is.

Danny Zacharias: 11:40

Yeah, no, that's really good. I mean, our, one of our kind of predecessors, you know, who we've looked to, even though I didn't get to meet, was Richard twist, who wrote some really good books. And he would often, you know, just say, Jesus was an indigenous man walking in the lands of his ancestors and and he knew that history of his people. He knew the histories of the lands that he occupied and how they were, you know, especially at his time, oppressed, you know, and and colonized, and all of these things bear, you know, so much connection to what how we are today. So, you know, I think that is, that is really spot on, especially if we kind of expand it out and understand, again, those sociological factors like being tribal people. I mean, the Israelites were tribal people, they were collectivist in their mentality. They shared these things that tribal people the world over still share today, which is very different from North American readers, which are very individualist, right? That's just the kind of the makeup of our society. It's a society I grew up in. I wager to guess that all three of us would have that connection to individualistic culture. And you know, if that's the water that you swim in, you don't default to thinking like a communitarian society, but that's what the Hebraic culture was like. That was the culture of Jesus, and it is the culture that, again, many people do share across Turtle Island and across the world, and so those are assets that, you know, we can learn about, try and embrace, especially those of indigenous heritage like myself. That's, you know, part of my cultural reclamation is understanding and trying to live into those worldviews and those life ways that see all things as related, that have a more communitarian mindset. Because as kind of Chris intimated, as you just intimated, this is very much aligned with the Hebraic mindset from those who wrote our scriptures.

Joshua Johnson: 13:46

You know, in your chapter, it's all relative. You write about all of our relations. So how do you see scripture affirming this web of kinship among lands, people and creatures?

Danny Zacharias: 13:59

Yeah, all my relations is language that's shared across a number of First Nations across Turtle Island. It comes in different forms. Sometimes it's kind of embedded into some of their just teachings and ceremonies. So part of, for instance, Cree natural law, which is part of my heritage, it's kind of embedded in some of the natural laws of pre law, where and then sometimes it manifests in actual sayings, right? So the Metis often end their prayers with all my relations. You know, it's this reminder of interconnectedness, kinship, same with the Lakota. I'm blanking on the exact phrase in Lakota, although I knew it at one time, getting old, forgetting things. But there is this, this kind of undergirding. Part of the indigenous worldview is interconnectedness with all things, and it's certainly prime and kind of foundational for indigenous worldviews. And it manifests in sayings. It manifests in ceremony, as we kind of go into the scriptures then, and as I, as I look especially at the Hebrew Bible, but into the New Testament as well. I just see so much resonance with that the Old Testament, you know, I think about, I think about Old Testament scholars who have focused on land and said, like, land is so central to the Old Testament, covenant, the relationship with the land, the relationship with creator. It's like this triangle, right? It's. It's the human community, it's it's God Self, and it's the land that you occupy. This is the picture that we have in the garden, right? So Adam and Eve are placed in a in a garden to to care for it, and that the language, or the translation I've I've advocated for, is to serve and conform to it, meaning that you need to embrace the rhythms of the land around you, and you're called to serve it these this is the wording that's used. So you see in our creation story how it sets us up for this kind of triangulation of relationship with a particular land. And then through the creation story as well. We see how we are one amongst many created things in which we're in interrelationship. So the plants feed us, it feeds they feed the birds. They feed the land creatures. And that is the way creator has designed it to be. You know, we are in this essential relationship. And so when we don't recognize this and then live in a right way, given that that's the design, then then destruction is inevitable, right? If we're not living in creator's designed way. And so the way the indigenous worldview works and reinforces it is to always be reminding ourselves that these things are our relatives, as relatives, they deserve respect, and that respect manifests in different ways, but is especially centered on the idea of our of the Earth as mother, the land is always taking care of us, and that's the way that God has designed it right from Genesis one. And so the language of relative is, is how it manifests in the indigenous ways of thinking and being. And I certainly see as you, as you mentioned in the chapter on it's all relative thread lines through our scriptures that help us to think in the same ways, and it's really our hope that we can, along with many other theological voices, counter the idea that land is a commodity that we are meant to rule over it in in a domineering way, rather than seeing ourselves as a Part of it.

Joshua Johnson: 17:51

Right now, in the world that we live in today, we're morphing into closer to something called like a monoculture. We Western civilization and progress, and this need for more and more expansion and growth feels like the world over is starting to morph into one conglomerate of a culture. Why is it important for us to reclaim some culture, to be able to see some things that we may be missing now, and why is it really important that we're seeing the Bible, even reclaiming some indigenous culture that's been here in this land for a long time.

Danny Zacharias: 18:34

It made me think immediately of the portrait in Revelation with people from many tribes, tongues and nations, that that diversity of culture and peoples has always been God's plan from the beginning, and as we have this vision of the heavenly throne in Revelation, we see that it is also the culmination of creator's goal, and so it's something that we need to celebrate, and a vision is meant for us to live into. So, you know, I agree with your diagnosis, you know, with the kind of collapsing of, or maybe that's not the right word, but, you know, this the expansion of the internet and all in social media, which has made everything feel really close. You know, the, what used to be six degrees of separation is now two, that kind of thing. I mean, it has collapsed those things and, and it's a detriment to, you know, the diversity that God embraces and loves, but there is always a hegemonic drift, especially when you were in places that are, you know, superpowers in the world. So that's kind of one part I wanted to say. And in terms of diagnosis, any further diagnosis Chris is, is, I could see in his face, he's pondering and ready to speak his mouth.

Chris Hoklotubbe: 19:54

You know, the story that came to my mind was someone we talked to, and I'll leave her name anonymous, but she said, growing up, she just had this sense of, I'm a dirty Indian, like there's just this deep sadness and around the idea that there's really nothing beautiful or good within my tradition that contributes either to the dominant culture or to even our theological imagination. And so much of our project is to celebrate, to celebrate and identify the assets of indigenous culture that it has a. Lot of beauty, a lot to give, not only for us, but we think, offers some good medicine to some of the excesses and directions that this world is taking. And as you think about monocultures, one of our invitations in this book, I think, is to is back to the particular right? So again, we don't want to say that there, that we're trying to do a pan indigenous, all indigenous work. Here we are just beginning a conversation, and we want to encourage more conversations that get even more local. And in a world that is becoming more and more monoculture, that is experiencing that through brands and through internet, there's this real invitation to get to know the land that you're on. Learn about the ancestral stewards of this land, learn about the watershed that affects your ecosystem. Have some kind of tangible relationship with your garden outside and with the people around you, because that's going to be, you know, the things that you're in relationship with, and that's in your particular location, is, are particular location is are going to be the most meaningful life impacting relationships you have, versus the quick hits of endorphins that we get from our participation on the internet.

Joshua Johnson: 21:44

I grew up in Puyallup, Washington, which is indigenous name for a people, meaning the land of generous people. And so it was for me to be able to know like, Oh, it is the land of generous people. This valley is fertile. It's generous. There's this land. It actually helps me get a broader view of where I come from, who I am, even though I'm not indigenous myself through birth and heritage, but to be able to be on that land, we are connected, and I think that's important for me growing up there. But one thing I like is that I know that it was it's an indigenous name. How can we start to reclaim some of that for people who don't really have eyes to see what actually is there. You know, you're talking about reclaiming what has been there all along. Chris like, how do we start to see and uncover what has been there?

Chris Hoklotubbe: 23:32

You know, I am of the persuasion that we don't win people over through arguments. We win them through relationships and stories. And that's one of the things that we've tried to do in this book, is to tell a lot of stories of beauty and joy and goodness that is happening in Indian Country, that's happening in our communities, to kind of give a taste and see approach that there is some goodness here. Once you see that goodness and experiencing that goodness, you might kind of look for it. You know, one of the things we talk about bringing it back to the land, is this idea of how being in a relationship with land can have this really life giving effect upon us, even just by saying thank you to the land. For many indigenous people, there are ceremonies where we give tobacco to the land, or when we do honorable harvests, or the first fish ceremony, which is to say, thank you to the salmon for the food that feeds us. And this comes to recognizing plants and animals as persons, rather than objects or beings. But when you even just take in this perspective that animals and plants are persons, or at least could be persons, let's just start there. That changes our emotional response and attitude and even our sense, and ultimately, our sense of responsibilities and duties to the things around this rather than to think of them as objects, as its as disposable and extractable resources that expand our power and our wealth, to change it, to change that, even that little perspective, that that tree is a person, that animal is a person. I just walk around my days with just a bit more gratitude. Like, wow. Like, look at this beauty. Look at everything that around that's around me that sustains my life, that allows me to live when I eat meat, that's a life that has died, that's been given, that that sustained my life. And we, when you look at world religions, one of the most common spiritual attitudes that the wisest sages are trying to get us toward is this area of gratitude and appreciation and this constant practice of saying thank you. And so me, it's your prayer, right? Is to say thank you to God, and how it changes our inner disposition. And so we can even move toward that boy that that's a life changing move.

Joshua Johnson: 25:57

Let's get into some biblical interpretation. So let's go into naboth's descendants. And how does reading the story like that? So tell us what the story is in Exodus, and then move into what does it look like to read that from an indigenous perspective in North America? Naboth.

Danny Zacharias: 26:16

You know, this is a. Little known character, in some sense, like it's a small story, but it is, and has been significant for indigenous peoples, because it's almost like a story in miniature of exactly what's happened on Turtle Island. So Naboth is an Israelite who has a land that has been passed on to him. It's his family land, and he recognizes the responsibility to steward it. And along comes the king Ahab who has really no devotion to the covenant, nor any sort of kind of honorable kingship, along with his darling wife, the Queen Jezebel and and basically they, they conspire to get naboth's vineyard by killing him so that so that the king can have the land. And obviously, I had read that story before, but it really came kind of to the fore to me again, just with a little little quote, as I was reading about a missionary on the west coast of Canada. His last name was claw, C, l, a, H, and as he was contending with the government over their lands, his his people's lands, and essentially being told that you need to get off of it and not come back. He made, you know, this reference to this story, and he said, I've read the story of Naboth, and I know that God was not happy when Ahab took his land, and you know that that theological reflection from an indigenous social location in the midst of land being taken away by a government that is not treating with you at all like there was no treaty process there. It was just a don't come back type of thing by a Christian indigenous missionary, right who who was devoted to Christ, who saw the value of the gospel and and the healing that it brought to his people. And so he was a missionary, and yet being willing to speak truth to power in that way. I just thought was really powerful. And in our chapter, obviously, we talk about this and and, you know, indigenous readers, when we read a story like that, you know, we see ourselves kind of symbolically, like we are descendants of this very person who has undergone the same type of thing where people with more power came along and did what they wanted with our lands that we belonged to, instead of being good neighbors and choosing to because indigenous people have always been willing to share the land well, to be good neighbors with them. It's an overlapping kind of sovereignty, because they always believe that the land was the one that took care of us all, and then the gifts of the land were for the sustenance of all the animals and the human beings and the birds and everything else. And so we not only start that chapter with this story. But we go on to then say, what are the other things that happened because of land theft and colonization? And we talk about moving to talk about, for instance, the trail of broken treaties is our subtitle, because there are numerous treaties across Turtle Island. I don't know the exact number. It's a lot. There's more in the States than there is in Canada, because there is First Nations in the States. But those treaties were almost never honored, and that should be a huge issue for Christians when we believe that we are people of covenant, that God has covenanted with us, and we ought to be good covenant partners back and so for us to to bear this heritage as as countries both can in the US of not honoring treaties that were made should be deeply troubling to Christians today, and it should cause us to think about what are ways that we ought to be living in a good way given this fractured history.

Joshua Johnson: 30:42

So how does the role of truth telling something like that? I'm a Naboth descendant. I actually see myself in the story. This is actually what is happening here and now, and you are breaking treaties. You're telling Get off my hands, like this is not right. How does the role of like justice and truth telling in a place where some people may not necessarily right away, see the injustice of it, but having a different perspective actually shows us that there is a place of injustice. Is, what role does that take place as we're reading scripture?

Chris Hoklotubbe: 31:22

You know, one of the things I teach my students when we talk about preaching is that good preaching is always in conversation with daily events or the things that are impacting a community. And this is why it's important to have models for preaching that tend to our social location, because people bring in different stories and different concerns. And so, for example, my tribe, the Chalta, you know, one of the stories we carry with us is the Trail of Tears and the Treaty of dancing Rabbit Creek, which occurred much more like an episode of sopranos with intimidation and trickery versus a kind of a, you know, a deal where best interests are made and a good faith effort is made to find a win win situation. And so if these are the stories we carry, then when we're making connections to stories in the Bible, and seeing ourselves in the Bible, it's going to look a little bit different than people who don't have those stories, and so when preaching the Bible, or thinking about these stories of the Bible, there become really great opportunities. As we're telling the story of either the exile of Jewish people from Jerusalem into Babylon, these become springboards launching off pads to tell other stories that might be under appreciated or unknown by wider audiences. For example, one of the things that I really appreciated in my time in Oklahoma, talking to Chadha and Cherokee people about where they see their indigenous and their Christian identities come to blossom and flourish, is I would hear oftentimes about the importance of the Chota and Cherokee hymns, and him singing. And for many Chota and Cherokee those hymns were sung, and even many written along the trail of tears. And when you think about that, and you think about Psalm 137 by the rivers of Babylon and and actually, what's really interesting about that we don't actually have a lot of first hand have a lot of first hand accounts from the Jewish scripture about what that trail was like to go from Jerusalem to Babylon. Everything is referenced around it, that experience and that emotion is not there. Well, it gets captured in song. And when you juxtapose Chota Cherokee songs with that were written song along the trail with Psalm 130 says 37 you get this like, deep appreciation for how songs carry us through hard times and also, and we talk about this more in the book. I won't get into it here. But when Cherokee seeing many of the songs, like only a drop of blood or Amazing Grace, they tell stories about the Trail of Tears and the hardships they faced, about how their women were assaulted or their babies were murdered along the trail. And these oral traditions carry along with the songs and the songs that follow after. These stories become these moments of remembrance and lament, but also kind of resistance. We hear about the idea, the idea of a dangerous memory, that by continuing to remember and tell these stories, these are acts of resistance. These are acts of maintaining our identity until in the stories, until, you know, justice is fully accounted for, maybe not on this side of the world, but in heaven, and imagine, you know, is this how the Psalms and songs functioned for ancient Jewish people going into Babylon and in Babylon, what stories did they tell alongside of the songs as they sang and lamented on the rivers of Babylon?

Danny Zacharias: 35:58

If I can add one more thing to something else we need to think about as screw as readers of Scripture, is be aware of what character you may be thinking about yourself as, because we don't like to be necessarily confronted. You know, we're happy to think of ourselves as that one sheep that gets saved, you know, by the shepherd who left the 99 but are you? Are you brave enough to maybe say, maybe I'm occupying, occupying the place of King Ahab? You know it here. I'm not made off. I'm a in light of that Who do I need to be now that I know this?

Joshua Johnson: 36:41

Yeah, what an incredible point, and so helpful for us, a lot of us in the United States who are in the empire, living in the empire, and complicit in Empire at which, you know, the Bible was written through a people that the Empire had their foot on the necks of those people. And so now you know, if I'm part of the empire, how am I going to actually see myself in the story of Scripture and where, what do I need to do? And that has reframed a lot of of my thinking and seeing scripture, and it's been very, very helpful. So great point. But you also talked to. Recently about Babylon, and that's, you know, the trail to Babylon, the exile. So talking about old, older stories, dangerous memory, Trail of Tears, you talk about boarding schools as well. How does this story of exile in Babylon actually help us deal with cultural trauma and then bring about reconciliation? And restitution that needs to happen, because we again, are in a culture that is forward thinking, always about progress. We're like that was the past. We don't have to think about it anymore. How does this help us become better creatures of God?

Chris Hoklotubbe: 37:59

The pathway to healing comes through truth telling. Maybe this is what you were inviting us to get to beforehand, is that right now, in Canada, the United States, we don't even know full extent of the stories of what occurred in boarding schools. Canada is much farther along. And Danny could speak about the amazing work that has happened up there with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that we've only tried to recently under the work of Deb Holland to approach by gathering stories of boarding school survivors who had really traumatic experiences In these structured environments that then did not really set them up for success. For many of them, in the early especially in the early times of the boarding schools were really detrimental to their thriving. When we look at the story of Babylon, right, there are some resonances in the story of Daniel. Daniel, what we argue is kind of a boarding school participant. I mean, he, he is taken from his family, is put into a type of education scenario where he is asked to give up his culture. And, you know, the fun part of the Daniel story is that it's, it's really a story of maintaining Jewish identity. And look at how he thrives as he's able to maintain a hold on his culture, even in diaspora and exile. And the irony of all this is that Canadians and United States Christians, who are largely operating these boarding schools, who had Daniel at hand, had a possible script to imagine with, did not see themselves as Dan as Babylon, but as they had all these indigenous Daniels in their midst, they said, well, there's nothing good about your culture. You need to lose your language, you need to lose your foods, you need to lose your clothes and become like us and totally conform, which is the antithesis of the message of Daniel. And so we kind of walk through that. But Danny, I want to pitch it back to you, to talk to viewers and listeners about the the importance of the Truth and Reconciliation committee and the history in Canada, what it has meant for churches and and for the process of healing.

Danny Zacharias: 40:14

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's certainly still a lot of work to do, a long way to go, but the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada, which, you know, was modeled a lot after what happened in South Africa, was a series of events that culminated then in a large report. And those events were large. They were spread across Canada in which really survivors of residential schools were invited to tell their stories, many of them, for the very first time, with incredible trauma being shared, but also healing begun for many, or the first step into healing. So you know, this is an ancient history residential school survivors in Canada are still with us. There are parents and grandparents, and sometimes great grandparents, because the residential school system was forced upon First Nations people. They were the kids were taken by the government what was originally supposed to be education which the communities wanted in their communities became boarding schools far away from communities in which they had no choice, in which they didn't see their children, in which incredible harms were often done, and which for a number of decades, was handed Over fully to churches to run. So it's really just an appalling history in Canada, and the TRC was steps taken towards reconciliation, to let people tell their stories, to have Canada truly listen to it, and then to say again, what kind of nation do we need to be in the light of this history that we've participated in, and it resulted in a lot of documentation, but also 94 calls to action that was, that was aimed at all levels of society, including some that, you know, applied to, you know, my particular kind of circles in kind of low. Small evangelical spaces, as it were, and then some very pointed things, towards the government, towards media, towards the churches that ran the schools. And some of those calls to action, you know, have been worked on really well. Some have not been touched yet. Others have regressed. Some are continuing to move forward, and depending on the church and the denomination, it's been varying levels of progress.

Joshua Johnson: 42:45

In chapter three, you're talking a lot about along, along the bright path of you know Jesus's teachings, so you talk about his his Jubilee passages. How does that that help us see this bright path to see Jesus teachings, to see the Jubilee passages in light of where we are and what we're going through.

Chris Hoklotubbe: 43:07

Yeah, one of the themes that we try to trace throughout this book is the Jubilee teachings that both go to deep within the Hebrew Bible, the memories of the ancient Jewish people, and then into the story of Jesus. So at the heart of the Jubilee teachings is this recognition that people are tied to the land, and people live in relationship to the land. Land travels with family, and so that every 70 years there's a reset, that whatever has happened, you know that you've had to sell your land, or you've gone into debt, that there's a restoration, that people are given another chance to get back to the land, because the land remembers them. The land sustains them. Their families are buried there, and their whole livelihood is tied to that land and also their identities, right? They're who they are, as as laborers, as farmers, as caretakers of this land that that relationship is central to who they are, and it's restored. Now, the Hebrew Bible doesn't directly talk about this being fulfilled, but as one of our friends, Michael Rhodes, showed us, Hebrew people were not unique in doing this. Actually, we see other ancient cultures having laws, legislations that are like this Jubilee law that you know points to this broader cultural, indigenous recognition that like people go with the land, and their health and well being is tied to their relationship to that land. And so we carry this on to Jesus, and we think about, well, what does salvation mean? What is Jesus saving us into you? In my evangelical culture, we sure talk a lot about what Jesus is saving us from, and that's usually from hell, but so much of his teachings, especially in the Gospel of Luke is what is he rescuing us into? And oftentimes, I think we don't think deep enough about how what that looks like is right relationships. And from an indigenous perspective. This is right relationships with all our relations, which includes the land, which includes the animals, which includes our whole ecosystem that we're interdependent upon, because when everyone is flourishing, right, that that's when we are getting to the kingdom of God here. So you know that invites us to think about even returning to Jesus's first sermon, which is in Luke four, right? And what does he do? He starts announcing the Jubilee. He says, this is here in your midst, and I have come to bring right relationships with you. That I've come so that the blind may see, the dead may live the the the prisoners might be released, right that people are given this chance to be in right relationship. And I will say that this even trickles down to a reading of Jesus interaction with the rich young ruler that was really taught to me by my friend Ted Myers. You know when he asked the rich young ruler to give all your possessions back, like, follow me and give your wealth. Well, you know, in our Western culture, we think, Oh, he's going to empty his bank account. But in ancient Galilean culture, they don't have that liquid wealth, that their wealth is tied to, what it's tied to land that this rich Galilean probably like other people we know from socioeconomics, from similar kinds of societies, agrarian societies, their wealth was based in land, land that was likely taken or not taken, but earned or accumulated. That's the word I'm looking for, because other farmers defaulted on their loans, and when they had nothing to pay, they gave their land. And so wealth was accumulated as more loans were given out to people that defaulted upon and so when Jesus says, Give give your riches, he's not talking about this pirate treasure chest. He's saying, give the land back. Right? Give the land back to the people and then come follow me and see how much more you can live in right relationship to

Danny Zacharias: 47:08

others. Yeah. And one thing I want to add to is Chris and I are really indebted to Randy Woodley for this chapter, and he's kind of appears through. About this chapter, it helped us learn about indigenous cultures from his own research. And the idea of kind of these principles of harmony have very much been in Indigenous ways of knowing it being, and that that kind of energized our imagination, as it had Randy to go back to the Gospels, go back to the Scripture and kind of make us rethink, right? And see, and that language of bright path comes from Christmas tradition, you know, walking in a good way. That's kind of comes, you know, that's more kind of the cremate way of talking. But it's all going to the same thing, right? Learning to walk well before a creator in the way that he intended, which means that you're seeking balance and harmony within all your relationships with people closest to you, the people furthest from you, your ancestors behind and your future generations that will come to you, as well as the land that you're on

Joshua Johnson: 48:15

the through line of your book. And we talk about, I think we have two different distinctions of faith. That there is a place where a lot of people have read the Bible as a transactional Faith and Faith as transaction. And this feels like we're reading the Bible as faith as relationship, is relationship to, you know, all of creation, to us, to God, to each other, to the land, to all of creation. How does the the shift from transactional faith into relational faith help us? Because

Chris Hoklotubbe: 48:51

I think one of the transactions I see a lot happening is is one of power. It is that my faith gives me this higher standing, that I've got ultimate power on my side that's going to up my luck toward prosperity and wealth, that's that's going to increase my my life and prosperity. And that makes me think of conversations with my friend Donnie Begay, for whom you know, in in today culture, there's, there's not a word clearly for Good and Evil. There is good and evil, but the way in which they ascribe evil is using your power to diminish others in order that you might extend your own life or gain more power, right? And that that kind of captures evil, right? Right? That's the MO of most villains and stories and and I feel like for it seems to me that there's a lot of people that use scripture and use their Christian faith in this transactional way. And what we're trying to point people to is that the way of Jesus really is about the self giving, empowerment of others that is about being in relationship and navigating what love looks like at any given moment that is attentive to what does this relationship need and what is this relationship asking me of This that takes me to my grad school days where, you know, there's this question of those, John, does gospel John have an ethics? Because it doesn't really, it talks about love, but doesn't really unpack what love looks like until we get to that foot washing ceremony, right? And one could even say, well, all the DNA of what love looks like is there in this story that's asking us, maybe by not giving us a clear answer, like we might in Kantian philosophy, like show me all the things, list me in propositions, all the things I need to do to love. Rather, it tells you a good story that's supposed to activate your imagination of what does self giving, humble love look like at any moment, and with the story of my mind, how is this going to help form and shape me as the disciple to to look for with eyes, to see what love looks like in this moment with the relationships at hand. Yeah.

Danny Zacharias: 51:08

And the other thing I would say too, which you know Chris was going there right at the end, is the Bible speaks about salvation and life with God in all sorts of ways, and there are metaphors of transaction. There are meta judicial metaphors. The problem is that there are certain metaphors that have dominated Western Christian ways of thinking and theology. And we're trying to say maybe there's better metaphors for us to use that will be more fruitful, that will foster in us the ways we ought to think about ourselves and the community we belong to and our God that make us better human beings make us more to be more Christ like and I think that we can see the results of an over emphasis on judicial metaphors and transactional metaphors playing out in Western Christianity today, and it's a chance to look at the wider body of Christ and look to our scriptures and say, Is there better ways of us creatively engaging with our theology and. Comes right from our texts and comes from a wider

Chris Hoklotubbe: 52:22

community. Elaborate on what Danny just said, is to say, maybe not, I get worried about better, but maybe more balanced ways, because our book is has a very much yes and approach. It's Yes, there are transactional things and there are other metaphors, and it's not to like. I think in the Western culture, we often sign things like, it's it's one or the other, like, we've got to like. And this is where I think Danny was going to that. I want to be clear to our readers, because I think sometimes when they hear this language, they're like, Oh, well, they're trying. They're dissing completely anzone, or they're throwing away my conservative faith, like, no, no, no, that's something we're doing. We're saying yes and yes, that's there. And there's these beautiful things that, if they're brought into balance, can create a more holistic, satisfying, and we would argue, Biblical faith that had we've under appreciated, and we've, we've, we've lost track of because of our 21st Century Euro American culture.

Danny Zacharias: 53:22

Joshua, this is why our book was pretty good, because I would say something, that's okay, Chris would come along make it better, then we'd set it to the editor, and she'd totally rewrite it, and then it was good, yeah, and vice

Joshua Johnson: 53:34

versa. Hey, that that's very typical of what this book is all about is actually collaboration, relationship with one another. That is not an individual game, but it is a game that we're in this together. And so you reflected that within your writing people editor. So that was wonderful. If you had hope for your readers that would read reading the Bible on Turtle Island. What hope do you have for this book?

Danny Zacharias: 54:02

I mean, my first hope is that, you know, each person would buy 500 copies and give them out to their friends. I mean, that would really help our Yeah. I mean, certainly we hope that people will have an increasing appreciation of the diversity of the Body of Christ, given that we have, you know, intentionally focused on our places, our countries, Turtle Island, the place where we belong. We really hope that indigenous readers will feel empowered to know that there's beauty and truth and wisdom in their traditions that come from creator and can enrich their lives, and that they don't see an internal conflict between their devotion to Christ and the reality of them being Choctaw, them being Lakota, them being Cree, them being whatever nation they belong to, because that is so often been the gospel. Again, as Richard twist used to say, We've only heard the gospel as bad news. It's like, yeah, Jesus loves you, except for every other part of you. And and we want to say, no, actually, God created you that way, and there's beautiful assets to who you are, and for non Indigenous readers, Chris, what about our non Indigenous readers?

Chris Hoklotubbe: 55:23

I hope that they would take this book and see this book is for them, that any thing that's good, true and beautiful may have its own expression, and that's that's local to is kind of social location, but, but that if it's good and wonderful, it's for their Betterment too, and that they might be enriched from it. So, you know, we've even seen, if you look at the back of the book, you know, some of our endorsers like, oh, this book wasn't for me, but I still learn from it, like I get the rhetorical turn of that phrase. Because in many ways, I one of my biggest hope is that, as Danny said, that an indigenous person would read this book and feel like I could do this too. My hope is that this isn't the last book on this topic, that there's even more words, right? Like we just scratched the surface. We hope for more of this, and I do, but I do want to say like, and this book is for you. This book isn't about bashing Euro Americans. This book isn't about like listing grievances. This book is really grounded in an asset based approach that says that, you know, our way forward of having life at its best together is by telling these stories of of the goodness and the joy and the beauty that's out there, not just for indigenous flourishing, but for all our all our flourishing.

Joshua Johnson: 56:46

That's wonderful. Well, reading the Bible on Turtle Island will be available anywhere books are sold. You go and get that. It's an excellent book, and I really thank you for writing this. I think it's a perspective that is missing and we need. And so this has been fantastic. Is there anywhere that you would like to point people to? How could they connect with what you're doing?

Danny Zacharias: 57:09

We are both connected with Nate's. Chris has mentioned that we mentioned a lot in the book. And so you can learn more about nates@nates.com and. Like I said, I'm dedicated divinity college. If you want to know more about me, that's the main halls that I haunt. And I would also say, you know, if, if this continues to spark readers and are desiring more, certainly minor footnotes. But there's also a journal that comes out of the annual Nate symposium that we both contributed to. I'm one of the current editors, and so there's lots of ways to connect and continue to learn well.

Joshua Johnson: 57:46

Danny and Chris, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for bringing us into what does it look like to read the Bible on Turtle Island. And I really enjoyed our conversation. I think a lot of people get some good things out of it, and the book is fantastic, and I think that people, everybody needs to read it. So it's not just for one person or one group of people, but it's for all of us, so that we could actually see that the Bible was an indigenous book written by indigenous people that was informed by the land, their connection with it, and their connection to creation and and all of us, and so I really enjoyed it. So thank you so much.

Danny Zacharias: 58:26

Thank you so much. Thank you, yes, yeah, thank you. You you.