Living in Right Relationship with our Native Neighbors: A Statement
Updated: 5 days ago
Summary: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). God has been present and at work within the Americas long before Christian missionaries arrived from Europe. As Christians, we confess our complicity and repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery which provided the philosophical and legal framework that gave Christian governments moral and legal rights to invade and seize indigenous lands and dominate Indigenous Peoples.
We reject the continuing influence of this doctrine, including forms of spiritual domination that treat European expressions of Christianity as superior, disregard tribal sovereignty, or demean Indigenous cultures and sacred traditions. Thus, we affirm the inherent dignity, sovereignty, cultures, and spirituality of Indigenous peoples, and we stand in support of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho peoples of the Wind River Indian Reservation.
We call upon ourselves and our fellow siblings in Christ to practice ministry rooted not in cultural domination but in humility, unity, and love: respecting tribal sovereignty and self-determination, seeking healing and repair for past and present harms, and trusting that God is already present and at work among all peoples.
Statement: Recent conflict on the Wind River Indian Reservation, arising in part from a Christian pastor’s public condemnation of the Sundance in a sermon, calls Christians in Wyoming to reflect upon how we practice ministry among and alongside our Native neighbors.
The 222nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 2016, adopted recommendations for action on the Doctrine of Discovery. Among those recommendations is a call for the PCUSA to “confess its complicity and repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery.” In a subsequent report, approved by the 223rd General Assembly in 2018, sessions and mid-councils were urged to confess their complicity and repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, to apologize for our participation in the Indian boarding school system, and called Presbyterians toward concrete actions of repentance and repair.
In the apology issued to Native Americans, Alaska natives, and native Hawaiians by the 222nd General Assembly (2016) it states:
“In our zeal to tell you of the good news of Jesus Christ, our hearts and minds were closed to the value of your own epistemologies and lifeways. We did not understand the full extent of the Gospel of Christ! We should have affirmed the commonality between your spirituality and our understanding that God’s sovereignty extends with length from East to West, with breadth from North to South, with depth throughout the Earth, and with height throughout the Sky and Heavens.
Even worse, we arrogantly thought that Western European culture and cultural expressions were necessary parts of the Gospel of Christ. We imposed our civilization as a condition for your accepting the Gospel… Thus, we demonstrated that we did not fully understand the Gospel we were trying to preach.”
As Presbyterians in Wyoming we confess that we do not always understand the Gospel we try to preach fully. We recognize that Christians have too often entered Indigenous communities believing that we possessed God while Indigenous peoples did not, and that becoming Christian required abandoning Indigenous identity, culture, and traditions.
For these sins and their continuing consequences, we repent. Repentance requires more than acknowledging the sins of previous generations. The assumptions underlying the Doctrine of Discovery continue whenever Christians claim spiritual or cultural superiority, disregard tribal sovereignty, demean Indigenous cultures, or believe we must “fix” or “save” Native peoples.
The 223rd General Assembly (2018), called upon the church to move beyond repudiation toward action and to establish relationships grounded in contemporary human rights standards. The “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” affirms the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination and to maintain their spiritual traditions, customs, and ceremonies. We recognize these principles as consistent with our calling to love our neighbors and to honor the God-given dignity of each person.
Therefore, we reject Christian ministry that demeans Indigenous peoples and cultures; that disregards the sovereignty or expressed wishes of Indigenous communities; and any idea Christians bring God into places where God was previously absent. The Gospel calls us to humility. When Peter crosses cultural and religious boundaries in Acts 10, he discovers that God has gone ahead of him. His encounter transforms his own understanding of God's work, leading him to proclaim, “I truly understand that God shows no favoritism” (Acts 10:34).
Faithful Christian ministry begins with the recognition that God is already present and at work among our neighbors. Therefore, we affirm our support for the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho peoples of the Wind River Indian Reservation. We affirm their inherent dignity, their cultures and sacred traditions, including the Sundance, and their sovereignty and right to self-determination. We affirm the authority of tribal governments to determine what organizations and ministries are welcomed within their communities. We also recognize that many Indigenous people are also our siblings in Christ, and we affirm that Indigenous Christians should never be forced to choose between their Christian faith and their Indigenous culture.
As Highlands United Presbyterian Church, we commit ourselves to the call to live in right relationship with our Native neighbors; through learning the histories of the lands upon which our congregations worship; confronting the continuing influence of the Doctrine of Discovery within our own theology and institutions; respecting Indigenous cultures and sacred traditions; respecting tribal sovereignty; and pursuing healing and repair for harms in which the church has participated.
We pray that our Indigenous neighbors will hear the sincerity of these words. More importantly, we pray that they will see these words lived out through our actions.
This statement was adopted by the session of Highlands United Presbyterian Church (Cheyenne, WY) on September 10, 2026.
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