Hope and healing on the reservation

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 23rd.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: reaching native America.

The Wind River Indian Reservation makes up more than 2 million acres in central Wyoming. It’s shared by the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. Many say it’s also a place of spiritual darkness. WORLD Reporter Travis Kircher introduces us to missionaries working there.

AUDIO: [Dancers with singing and narration]

TRAVIS KIRCHER: It’s a cool August evening outside The Museum of the American West in Lander, Wyoming. As native American singers pound drums and chant tribal songs, about a dozen performers with the Eagle Spirit Singers and Dancers leap and skip before a crowd of onlookers. Their figures cast long shadows in the grass as they perform native dances in brightly colored shawls, feather headdresses and moccasins. Eventually, the audience is invited to join the festivities and take part in a native dance contest.

But not everything is as cheerful at the nearby Wind River Indian Reservation.

SILAS: The people are dying left and right. There's no change.

Silas Condon and his wife Melissa are Native Americans who grew up on reservations. They proudly recite their bloodlines. Both have ties to the Northern Cheyenne tribe, but Silas also has Cheyenne River Sioux blood and Melissa has ties to the Northern Arapaho and Oglala Lakota tribes.

Both came from a life of addiction.

MELISSA: I was heavily addicted to methamphetamine. I was an alcoholic. I drank every single day.

Silas rode with gangs.

SILAS: I was out there robbing people. I've been in shootouts. And I hurt a lot of people. And that's how that lifestyle is down there. All we do is drink, fight, party, violence—all of it.

Historically, the reservation has had a crime rate 5-7 times the national average. Life expectancy is less than 50 years. Unemployment hovers at around 80 percent. Drug abuse, sexual assault and teen pregnancy are far more prevalent here than elsewhere.

LUCAS: We’re on a mission to see a nation come to know Jesus.

Sarah Lucas and her husband run a ministry on the reservation called Foundations for Nations. They’re both white, with no Native American blood. Originally from Indiana, Sarah’s parents were missionaries to Native American people, so she grew up on the reservation.

LUCAS: You see the trauma. You see the hurts, the pains, the addictions, the data. You can ignore it and say, you know what? It’s somebody else’s problem. Or you can carry the Father’s heart.

AUDIO: [Climbing up steps]

The ministry consists of a church, a food pantry and youth programs—and there’s plans for a women’s shelter.

Lucas says it’s about loving the local community and introducing them to Christ. But it’s not easy. Anyone who ministers on the reservation must walk a delicate line between honoring Native American heritage, while at the same time pointing people away from spiritual darkness.

LUCAS: There's things we cannot compromise on. It's like, you cannot go to your medicine man and believe for healing and be doctored up and, you know, into witchcraft and then go to Jesus.

At the same time, Lucas says those who do respond to the Gospel are often ostracized from the rest of the indigenous population. They’re called apples.

LUCAS: The term apple means, “Red on the outside, white on the inside.”

But she admits history has given Native Americans reasons to be distrustful of whites. Broken treaties. Children being forced into white boarding schools. But Jesse Arthur, Melissa Condon’s brother, blames those scandals on what he calls the white Jesus and says that has nothing to do with the Jesus of the Bible.

JESSE: The white Jesus caused pain, caused hurt, caused division, caused chaos—all this stuff. But when you tell people Jesus wasn’t white, he was Jew. And you can see the eye—it’s like, relating. Because now it’s like, ‘He was Jew? That means he was of color!’ And that breaks down the barrier.

Today, both Silas and his wife Melissa are committed Christians who credit Christ for freeing them from drug and alcohol addiction.

MELISSA: I've been set free ever since and I give my life to Him and I’m committed to serve Him.

They both attend Foundations for Nations, and Silas is involved in open-air preaching. He says he has to be because Native American spirituality has done nothing to help his people.

SILAS: Over there, they don’t really have a book. They don’t have nothing to live by there. It’s word-of-mouth, so it can always change.

He points to his Bible. It’s ragged, worn through, with highlight marks and notes.

SILAS: Right here, we have standards: How to live and how to be!

He admits it can be hard to face opposition from his own people, but now he responds to confrontation differently. He points to scars on his knuckles.

SILAS: These are all teeth marks. I’m used to violence. I had a violent life. But when I came to Jesus, it’s different! You can’t be beating ‘em up! You have to love them! [LAUGHS] It was like UGHHHHH! [LAUGHS]

Silas, Melissa and Jesse are proud of their native heritage…

AUDIO: [Drums and singers]

…but they also know they’re now part of a stronger bloodline: the family of Christ. And just as they were set free from addiction, they’re looking to Him to rescue others from their tribes who are still trapped in bondage.

MELISSA: We serve a mighty God and the Lord is still moving, and I would just ask that everyone pray Isaiah 59:1 for everybody where it says "His hand is not shortened where he cannot save." And that the Lord is going to move in the Native American people and that there is hope.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher on the Wind River Indian Reservation, in central Wyoming.

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