Reflections on Yellowstone Revealed 2022
I spent the last week of August 2022 in Yellowstone National Park with Mountain Time Arts’ latest event, Yellowstone revealed. There are 27 indigenous tribes that are currently affiliated with the park. Many of them showed up for this historical moment in one way or another. Historic because this is the first time in 150 years, since the creation of Yellowstone as a park, that members of these tribes have been welcomed back. A multiplicity of well-organized events provided visitors to the park an opportunity to engage with the members of these tribes, not simply in an aloof learning-about kind of way, but also in meaningful interaction with the possibility for future connection.
When I was a little girl, I learned to see every experience as a possible missionary moment. Coming home from an event like this, my people would ask, “How did you share your faith?” And I would muster up some creative answer to please them. In my childhood faith community, missions was one-directional.
I see the life-giving movement of the Divine in the world differently now. I now believe that a wise spiritual leader understands that the Divine is already moving in the lives of individuals and communities to bring about wholeness and flourishing.
Missions is not that I have the joy of Jesus in my heart and impose it on the unconsenting heathen that I’ve pre-determined to be offensive. Rather, resting in Creator’s life-giving abundance, I can learn to attune to Creator’s goodness, wherever I am and whoever I am with, knowing that my heart needs to be transformed too.
As I sat by the Gallatin River processing the week, I found myself in awe of the many ways Creator was present. I am grateful for these memories. The laughter, the rain, the sacred moments and the hopeful promise of continued relationship was and is gift.
The unmistakable, proud indigenous presence in the park this week is a bold declaration that genocide did not win. White supremacist colonial harms were not strong enough to defeat indigenous joy. If this isn’t resurrection hope, I don’t know what is.
Indigenous people are here. We must humble ourselves to learn from the wisdom they offer us.