Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Welcome to that. Makes total sense. A podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis. We setting the Christian aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes alludes us that makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day. Okay. Everybody. I am so happy today to be here with Terry Wildman. He is the project manager, right? Translation director of the first nations version and indigenous translation of the new Testament that just came out in August from IVP. And I have been flipping through this. I've been reading passages, Terry. I hope we get to talk about it. I read the prologue, which was like mind blowing. Um, and so I'm so thrilled that Terry, um, came on to talk about this. We were just chatting he's he's good friends with Casey church who was on the podcast a couple of months ago. And I thought I was gonna surprise Casey with this version and he showed it to me at the end of our conversation. So he's been a big promoter of this and I'm so happy to have Terry on welcome Terry.
Speaker 2 00:01:35 Um, it's good to be here. I'm really glad to be here with you and your listeners.
Speaker 1 00:01:40 Thank you so much. Do you mind introducing yourself to, um, to us in the, in the traditional way?
Speaker 2 00:01:49 Well, I will say this Buju need G the modest Zig. And I said, hello, my friends who share this life together with me, that's the Anishinaabi language is also a jib way. Um, and it's, uh, just a way to greet someone. It's not a full trigger, traditional greeting, but it's part of it. The full one takes a while, but, uh, my wife and I live now in Maricopa, Arizona, we live on the traditional lands of the Pima and the Tohono O'odham. And, uh, I also serve, uh, as the, uh, the chief executive officer or chief of reign ministries, a nonprofit that we've had for about 20 years. And, uh, uh, arraign ministries is, is rain is sort of an acronym based in Isaiah where the rain comes down from above and waters the earth. So creator's word is like the rain that waters our lives and brings good, good things out of our lives.
Speaker 2 00:02:48 And so, um, uh, I'm also the director of spiritual growth and leadership development for native InterVarsity. So I have the, and the honor to help mentor all the staff for native InterVarsity. Right now I have 15 staff that I'm mentoring and native InterVarsity is, is just getting off the ground and growing it's it's, it's, uh, an inner varsity. It has its own branch now, so to speak. And I'm so glad to be part of this. He's these young natives, they're just getting a hold of Jesus in a whole new way. They, they love Connie and creator sets free and introducing him, you know, in a native way, they love the first nation version is some of them are actually part, uh, they were reviewers on this translation. Uh, and so the first nation version, new Testament, I'm the, I was the lead translator, sort of the visionary and the project manager, but we had a Bible translation organization, one book of Canada, part of the Wycliffe global Alliance who, um, came behind this translation.
Speaker 2 00:03:56 I won't tell the whole story behind how they got involved, but it was in 2015. Uh, they, uh, saw they found my website and they said, we want to get behind you. How would you like a, a Bible translation organization that works with indigenous people all over the world help you with this translation? And what I love about what one books philosophy is they say the, the indigenous people have to do all the translating. All they do is give them the tools and the expertise and, and some help, uh, behind the scenes and help raise funds. But, and they also helped me put together our first, our translation council, because we created a council of 12, all native American people, or first nations. Uh, you know, I don't have a problem with most of your native people that live on reservations. They just say, Hey, we're Indians, you know, but, uh, but there's lots of different ways to refer to our native people.
Speaker 2 00:04:59 So, so, um, but they were all first nations or native American or Indians from different tribes, different geographical locations, different age groups, all believers in creator sets free Jesus. And, uh, and, and they're still standing behind this translation and you can go to our website and you can see their faces and read a little bit about, about how this translation got started. So, um, I'm just blessed. It took us about five years to do this, and I'm blessed that now we're seeing, uh, the dream become a reality and we're seeing such good fruit come out of this.
Speaker 1 00:05:41 It's beautiful. It is, it is really beautiful. Um, I mentioned before we started recording, you know, I, I touched some places in the gospels. I said, touch some places in, in Paul's letters and the small man's, uh, letters. And, um, and just, it's just so rich. I love, I love the language. It's just so rich. I've, I've seen you quoted elsewhere saying that it's, it's, it's a gift, not only to the native people, but to other people living in other cultural contexts. And I completely agree with that. This is, this is something that, um, when, you know, um, been working on some other stuff and, and having some conversations with some pastors and, and, you know, just kind of coming to this realization that when we are free to bring our full selves to the community, um, obviously like it's like one of those things like, duh, this is kind of a one-off, you know, Christianity 1 0 1 thing.
Speaker 1 00:06:35 But when so many of us have, um, have assimilated or felt pressure to conform when we can bring our full selves, including our full cultural selves to the community, the community is only going to be strengthened and become richer because of that. And, um, and so this is a way where you guys bringing your full selves to the community is, is strengthening us and enriching us. And, and, and, you know, hopefully this can be a catalyst, right, for us to continue to do this. Um, I wanted to, to start, um, if it's okay with you, the dedication Terry is, um, well, I'm just gonna read it if it's okay. And then I'm hoping this can be, um, kind of a launching pad for our discussion. So this is how the translation begins. This is before the, before the table of contents, but I'll just read this a short paragraph.
Speaker 1 00:07:33 This translation of the good story is dedicated to the indigenous peoples of turtle island, north America, the tribal nations that call this land home. We pray the first nations version will bring healing to those who have suffered under the dominance of colonial government, who with the help of churches and missionary organizations often took our land, our languages, our cultures, and even our children as our tribal nations work hard to reclaim what has been stolen. It is our hope that the colonial language that was forced upon us can now serve our people in a good way by presenting creator sets free Jesus in a more culturally relevant context. Yeah, there's a lot there.
Speaker 2 00:08:25 Yes, there is. And, uh, I often my wife and I traveled for 10 years, visiting churches, visiting, uh, reservations, uh, playing our music and doing our storytelling at tribal centers. And, and we worked to help native people understand Christians. Then we work to help Christians understand native people. And, and so there's been a big gap there. There's a lot of misunderstanding on both. Um, but I I'll tell you this, our native people are more aware of what has happened than our non native people in this land. Um, there's a lot of ignorance and, uh, uh, and you know, you can, you, the word ignorance comes from the root word for ignore. See this information has been out there. There's been plenty of books written. If we really want to understand what's happened, there's nothing to stop us from understanding it, except for possibly the idea that we've bought into a mythology about our, this nation called the United States of America.
Speaker 2 00:09:36 There is a mythology about it. Um, a story about who we are that doesn't tell us all the truth, there's some truth in it, but it doesn't tell us all the truth. And I have a friend from Alabama's Dr. Tom Dooley, he's wrote a book called half trues are lies. So yes, um, a lot has happened. And our hope is, uh, that the dominant culture, uh, you know, one of the things that the dominant culture as they read this, I challenge people all the time outside of our native context in the churches, especially, um, I say, who are our national native leaders, please name me a few of them. We can name our black leaders, right? We can name some of our Asian leaders. There's a few of them out there. We can, we name our, our native leaders nationally, are they well-known? No, they're just, you know, it's like, we're out of sight out of mind.
Speaker 2 00:10:40 And that was the plan from the beginning. That's why we were put on, you know, pushed onto reservations and, and told we had to stay. They're told we could not leave. Um, and we were forced to eat what they fed us. We couldn't eat, eat, or hunt our traditional ways. So they sent us lard and white flour and commodity cheese, and they sent us barrels of whiskey. And this is what we subsisted ourselves on. And our bodies genetically were not prepared for this. And also genetically, we were not prepared for all the diseases that that came with with the settlers over here. And, you know, I, I, I don't blame anyone for bringing, you know, they, they brought disease, but when they intentionally introduce those diseases, that's another story that is a form of attempted genocide. And so there's a mythology that people have bought into, especially, uh, Christians.
Speaker 2 00:11:42 I had a talk yesterday driving to the airport with a couple of evangelical pastors, and I began to tell them the story. And th there, there a gas, they did, they had no idea that these things went on. I challenged them. I said, did you know that America was not founded as a Christian nation? And they said, what, what? And I said, no, I used to say, look for the name of Jesus in our constitution. Look for the name of Jesus. In, in, in, um, any, any of our founding documents. It's not there. You know, the founders were deist, they believe in some far away kind of God and, you know, uh, that's way away and, uh, very loose. But now there were a lot of Christians involved in the founding of America. That's true, but our nation was not founded on Christianity. And that's hard for people to accept because we bought into this whole story and it, and it's shaped the way we think about ourselves as we grow up native people, many of them, most of them know better unless they've been so assimilated that they've also some of our native people buy into the myth, you know?
Speaker 2 00:12:53 And so it's, it's a challenge as we go forward to de mythologize, people will especially believers in Jesus and then say, how are we going to go forward? You know, when, when the settlers came here, uh, I believe creator had a purpose for us coming together and his purpose, and I'm not on video, but, um, his purpose was us to come together in equality and brotherhood, and I'm putting my fingers together and overlapping them and, and bringing them together. That's the way it should have been done. And, you know, some people, some missionary, some early people, William Penn, he gave us 70 years sodas. It could have been done well, he was British. Okay. And, and, and the British crown, uh, gave him permission to do this experiment. That's where Pennsylvania came out of, but this experiment was that the native people and, and, and the settlers would all live together in peace and in harmony.
Speaker 2 00:13:57 And they did, there were native villages and there were non native villages. And then there were combined villages and they had 70 years of peace until a new king came in England. And then his sons, William Penn sons had a different vision. And that's where they began to break the covenants, break the treaty, break the peace, and began to mistreat and push out our native people. And that's been the story there's been, you can go all over this country and read of good beginnings. Native people were wide open to the good news about Jesus and the name. Jesus didn't have baggage attached to it back then, like it does today, if any of our native people, you know, and, and, and, uh, so there there's so much that has happened. We need to, to take a step back and reevaluate everything that we're doing. We need to reevaluate ministry with native people, all the denominations and churches, and, and, and, and, uh, you know, a lot of, uh, outreaches to our reservations, our reservation tours.
Speaker 2 00:15:08 And that's what my friend Bruce plumber from, from, uh, uh, Montana Indian ministries, he's a Cinnabon. I just spent, um, about five days with him in Louisiana on the Kashaya Indian reservation there in, uh, in Louisiana with, with a small group of, of, um, at a, at an Indian Bible church was putting on these revival meetings. And that's kind of the way it's always been done tent revival meetings. And, you know, we like we liked meeting outside better. That's, that's a good thing that draws some of our native people just getting outside that building. Uh, but, but a lot of times, um, uh, it's, it ends up being just kind of a, a pep rally rather than really digging deep. You know, if we're going to see true revival, it's got to cut deep into, into, uh, where the problems began and, and get to the root.
Speaker 2 00:16:08 You know, John, the Baptist told the people of Israel, the acts is being laid to the root, oh my goodness. To the root of the trees, not just to the branches or the leaves to the root and the, and the, and getting to the, where the problem began. And that's what we got to do. The, what happened with our native people. There's a lot of injustice in America. And what happened to our native people is the deepest root of injustice. So we got to get down to that root. And I believe that if we can get to the root, if this nation and probably the government won't do it, but if the government won't do it, can't believers in Jesus. Shouldn't we be leading the way into this kind of, uh, approach. And shouldn't the dominant culture step aside, and let native people have a say, bring them to the table and include them in national leadership and things like that.
Speaker 2 00:17:06 Um, rather than this kind of paternalistic, we know the best way for, for you to, to do church, we know the best way for you to, uh, do all these things. And of course, Casey already talked about a lot of these things, so I'm just repeating some of it. I have a little bit different approach to it, but, uh, but those are some of the things, and that's why we're dedicating this translation. This is, as far as I know, this is the first English translation ever done by native people, for native people. And now, again, let me make clear, I want it, if there's native people listening, we're not saying that this translation represents all native people everywhere. We were saying, we got a group of many native people together over 50 people, native people were involved in this translation, probably more. I haven't done the statistics completely yet for many different tribal heritage, many different places. And we're saying this group of native people have put this translation together to, to, uh, help represent how we would, uh, understand, uh, Jesus and how we would use English to speak in a more traditional storytelling way to our people. So those are some of the things,
Speaker 1 00:18:20 No, it's, it's, it's so important. And, and, you know, one of the things that I think when you said kind of, um, oh, my mind's kind of racing, but when you said, you know, that native people are just kind of out of sight out of mind. And, um, and I've been thinking about that lately with my own, uh, within my own context, um, I'm mixed. My mom is Hispanic and my dad is white. And I have just noticed, you know, there are a couple of things that I feel like are our similarities. You know, one of them is, um, my appearance, right. I feel like there are a lot of people who are Hispanic or Latino or Chicano, wherever they identify. Um, we just walk around and we don't, our appearance doesn't have something that would shout to the people around us, you know, what our heritage is.
Speaker 1 00:19:09 Right. Um, you know, I'm married to a white man with a Italian family. And so, you know, people see me, they see my dark hair and my last name, and they assume that I am Italian. And, um, and most people just don't ask, you know, um, and it, we don't have enter into conversations like that. Right. But because of that, it really does feel, um, you know, this kind of, out of sight out of, out of my nests, um, you know, uh, is, is present. One of the other things that struck me is, is I'm a Mexican American who does not speak Spanish. And so I started really thinking about this with your translation, you know, and at the beginning, kind of how, um, in the, in the introduction, uh, how your team describes, why it was written in English, right. Um, and then, then the percentage of native peoples who actually speak English and don't speak their native languages, you know, and, and I just thought, well, if I'm looking at you as my neighbor and my friend, I'm not going to tell someone who is native American, that if they don't speak their tribal language, they're less native American.
Speaker 1 00:20:15 Right. So it kind of even, you know, like I was saying before, when we bring our full selves to the community, then that ministered to me. Right. And I thought, well, I'm not any less Hispanic because I don't speak Spanish. I wouldn't, I wouldn't tell a native American, she was less native because she didn't speak her own tribal language, um, but spoke English instead. But there is at the same time, a way of using that language and a way of speaking English in a way of telling stories and narratives that are, um, that find their home in your, um, in different traditions, in different, in different contexts. And that's important. Um, one thing I've been, I've been dying to ask though, as you, as you've been talking is when you talk about this chasm kind of this gap between native American peoples and believers, I'm staring at someone who is in the middle of the Venn diagram.
Speaker 1 00:21:10 So I just kinda want to ask you, will you just share whatever, whatever comes to your mind about how you, how did you come to this place? How do you fit, um, in this? And what do you see, um, you know, from both communities as, as someone who is who's, I mean, my words, not yours, but as someone who's kind of a bridge maker, what do you see? What do you see from your perspective as being someone who is both native and a believer, um, inside these communities, even this conversation you had yesterday in the, in the vehicle with the pastors who were, you know, were clueless about, about, um, you know, what's happening, how do you see your role in that?
Speaker 2 00:21:52 One of the things I want to say ahead of time is, um, I wasn't raised in my native culture. I'm a mixed blood native. Okay. So, and, and many of our native people are mixed blood. Okay. Um, and, and it's the government policy that determines how much blood quantum, you have to have to be considered native by our government. And that's a whole nother story. So being raised, knowing I had native heritage in ancestry, but not being connected to it. I became a believer in Jesus before I reconnected to my native ancestry. And so in some sense, that helped me because if I would have been raised in my traditional native culture, I might not be a believer today,
Speaker 1 00:22:45 Is that, how does that,
Speaker 2 00:22:48 It hits me hard as a matter of fact, as, uh, as an adult, when the, when creators started making it clear to me that he was calling me to work with native people, I knew I had to reconnect to my ancestry, to my heritage. And so I that's how I would pray. And the amazing thing was that he sent people, creator, sent people to me to help me reconnect. Casey church was one of them, Casey church. It was my mentor in the initia NABI ways for at least a year and a half. And at the end of my mentorship with him, he, I went through a naming ceremony where he gave me my, my Indian name gets you anemic, which is, he says, voice of great funder. You know, he said, that's you that's, you, you got it. And that's, uh, but he says, but when you're home, when you're talking about creator, they're the voice of great thunder. But when you're home, you're just big funder. You just kind of a noise maker. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:23:58 You got to get our names. You know, we want to honor our names, but we don't want to, you know, if you get a name of a big name like that, you don't want it to go to your head. But, um, so I had help along the way. And as I re-embraced my native heritage, but in doing in that process, I had a crisis of faith. And then I thought, well, I'm going to read church history. And that was the worst thing I could've done because that put me deeper into a crisis of faith to understand that all throughout history, this is what Christians have been doing. They've been taking up the sword and conquering and dominating and forcing people to believe in Jesus. And here it had come to my ancestors. They were forced to believe in Jesus, many of them, some of them, and the amazing, the amazing power of the good story, the gospel is that even in those terrible circumstances, some natives found such freedom in Jesus and beauty and Jesus that they truly became followers.
Speaker 2 00:25:10 Others were forced into it. And then now, you know, and just kind of went through the motions so they could survive. But so, so for me, um, I went, I had to resolve this crisis and I can't, that's a long story in itself, but I resolved it. Uh, and the main thing that helped me resolve it was, was this, um, if I would have been presented to Judaism as a religion, or as a spiritual way, I probably would have never, you know, become a, uh, a convert to Judaism. You know, even though there's a lot of things in Judaism that relate to my native, our native ways, ceremonials, you know, lodges or temples and, and, um, and praying was smoke and all these different things that we do, there are some connections there that are good, but, but the story didn't for me, the story didn't capture me, who captured me, Jesus creator sets free, captured me.
Speaker 2 00:26:18 It's because of him that I believe in the God of Israel. And I had the privilege of going to Israel, putting on my regalia with another young native man going to the site, sea of Tiberius. And I got to share about why I, as a native person, believed in the God of Israel. And I said, it's because of Yeshua. And I had this big crowd of a hundred people and they were, most of them were Jewish. And, uh, th our translator that was a messianic Jewish person. And he thought, for sure, they were going to disperse the crowd. Cause it's, you're not allowed to speak about Jesus or Yeshua in Israel, but, you know, because we're a native American, they think this.
Speaker 2 00:27:03 So, so outside of the United States and Canada, we're sort of famous worldwide. And I think that gives us, we can get into places and share about Jesus in ways that other people can non-native people. And I think the dominant culture should, in terms of the, the Christian dominant Christian culture, uh, should say, Hey, you know, let's get behind these native people. Let's let let's fund them, you know, as they, and, but the thing is, is some of our native ministries have rejected our culture completely. And, but it's actually through our culture that gives us the opening to share creator sets free Jesus with other cultures. So anyway, there's, there's a whole story behind that, but so my role in all this being a mixed blood, um, uh, I have German, I have English, I have Ojibwe, I have Yaki. Okay. Which 1:00 AM I? Right. Well, one native guy.
Speaker 2 00:28:11 We were on the, when I lived on the Hopi reservation, we lived there for five years, my wife and I, and I had, uh, one day a Hopi, couple of Hopi guys came by walking by the church, uh, parsonage there up on second Mesa. And they came up and said, hello to my wife. And she was out doing some outside. And I came to the screen door and looked outside. And one of the native guys pointed over and says, oh, you got a native, uh, a native pastor here. And I don't know how he recognized me as native, but he did. Um, and, uh, he came up to me and he said, he says, you're native and he's. And I said, well, I'm part native. He says, which part?
Speaker 2 00:28:56 Which part he says, he says, if you're a native, you're all native. If you're Irish, you're all Irish. So whatever we have, we're all of that, right? It's not like we're divided up into chunks. It's like, when, when Jesus is, is, he's not half God, half man. He's all God, all creator. He's all man blended together. So we get to be all of whatever our heritage is. And I think that's beautiful. So I'm fully Yaki, I'm fully Ojibwe or Nisha now be I'm fully English, you know, but I relate best to my native heritage here in this land, because this is where I was born. I was born in the land of the native people or the Anishinaabe bag, the, uh, people of the land here. So, uh, does that answer the question?
Speaker 1 00:29:44 Yeah, no, it's beautiful. I appreciate you taking the time to do that because, um, I do. I think it's, I think it's so important, um, to it is it's important to recognize the history. It's important to recognize the, the, the pain, the loss what's been stolen. Um, it's important to recognize all of those things. I think, I think now we have, especially right now, we hear from, uh, unfortunately a lot from, from inside certain traditions in the church. I think we hear a lot of empty calls for unity without recognition of our history. Um, and it just can't happen. You know, I just, I just don't think it can happen that way, this, this beautiful picture that you showed, you know, of the, of the fingers in her locking, um, that doesn't come through this blind, um, you know, assimilation, right. Um, it comes through recognizing who we are and where we've come from, and that we are whole people.
Speaker 2 00:30:43 And instead of interlocking fingers, what we had is one hand came over top the other hand and pushed it down. Right. Right. That's the picture, the, the sort of picture of what happened.
Speaker 1 00:30:56 Yeah, no, you're, you're absolutely right. Um, I'm wanting to talk a little bit about in the translation. You've, you've mentioned a couple of things, but they just made me smile when I was reading it. Um, reading about the, the lodges, um, the, the prologue is like mind blown. So I'll just say, um, that the committee has taken the story from Genesis to Malikai essentially, and condensed it into a few beautiful pages. It reminded me of reading. Um, Steven's last sermon right before, before he was stoned. It's like, this is the history of our people here. Um, in these pages before we get into, um, into the story of creator sets free. Um, so I'd like for you to talk about and whatever order you want, but the naming that we see present in the translation, but also just the way the stories are told. Um, one thing I'll kind of edge in there that I'm hoping you can touch on, um, that I love about this translation is the, uh, Tallix where I think you say in the introduction, something like you've kind of imagined what, what the reader might be thinking.
Speaker 1 00:32:17 You know, one of the ones that stuck out to me was in mark talking about fasting, right? Like thinking this, this may be an odd thing when we're reading it. And, um, I wish it was an all translations, you know, we kind of read with this under, you know, there's some translators come and it's like, well, you're just supposed to know these things. And I'm like, I'm a seminary student. I'm here to tell you, we don't know these things. Like, you know, we don't know these things until we're taught. And so I that's one of the things I guess I'll say is, I feel like this translation is a good teacher, um, in a lot of ways. So, so wherever you want to go with that, the naming is storytelling and also the metallics, um, all really
Speaker 2 00:32:56 Okay. That that's a lot there, but I'll tackle that. So the vision that we had from the beginning was our people are, are an oral people, oral storytellers. There are still many of our languages today that do not have our tribes. They do not have written languages. Uh, and, and, uh, and so it was the missionaries that created our written languages many times, most of the time. And the, but the funny thing was that that at the same time, the missionaries were creating our languages and then translating the Bible into it. Other missionaries were taking away our language and preventing us from learning our language and making us learn English. So, so the, in a, in a negative way, the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing, and they were working against each other, uh, in that. So our goal from the beginning was to try to capture the feel of a storyteller, a native storyteller.
Speaker 2 00:33:58 That was our goal to word it in a way, and to do that. I spent a lot of time immersing myself in the, in, in native, early native writing that had been translated into English. Uh, some of black elk speaks and in different, uh, things there. And also, so, so we wanted to capture the feel of a storyteller, but we also wanted to write this. We wanted to decolonize the scriptures. So there were certain words that we, we just didn't use intentionally stayed away from words. We could have used those words. It's not like our native people couldn't understand that Lord, the word Lord, but the Lord word, Lord has baggage. It's attached to colonialism. It's attached to, uh, Europe and kingdom is attached to Europe and all these things. So one of the things, uh, that we wanted to do was to replace those words, with words that had the same meaning, but words that wouldn't trigger these responses that were negative because in our boarding schools, uh, when, when natives are in boarding schools, it was a sin to speak our language.
Speaker 2 00:35:09 It was a sin. Sometimes it came across, it was a sin to be native. You had to quit being native. So you could be accepted by, by God, by the Christian God. And, and so, uh, we stayed away from the word sin. We stayed away from these words, but we also knew that a lot of people, we wanted to write this to people who knew nothing about the Bible. And so we knew that we had to add some things in there, historic cultural things from the Jewish culture to explain what Passover was, to explain what, you know, in some places now our native people did fasting. So that wasn't as much of a, uh, of a thing, but, but we did it different than the Jewish people did. Fascinating. You know? And, and so there was connections there, uh, w the word kingdom, we didn't use the word kingdom.
Speaker 2 00:36:03 We used other words, and we have explanations in the back of the book. And we encourage people before you read this, read the introduction and read the prologue before you read the rest of it, then you'll understand what's going on there. And if you read the glossary in the end, you'll understand why we translated those most important words. Why did we call God the great spirit? Why do we call Jesus creator sets free and such? And so, but a lot of P so this was, uh, our, our goal was to, uh, put that together that way. And so the naming, our native people named our children, they were given names with the meanings.
Speaker 2 00:36:49 Well, Hebrew people did the same thing. And so we said, okay, let's put in the meanings of the names. So, so, you know, like, uh, Peter, he can be stands on the rock, Abraham, the easy one, the Bible already clearly gives us the meaning of his name, father of many nations. Um, and then we found out that all the places in the Bible there, their names have meanings, Jerusalem. <inaudible> the village of pace, you know? And so, so, um, all these names hadn't meaning. So we decided to put the meanings of every name. So we had to research, we had to look into the meaning of the, of the Hebrew names and the Greek names. And then we wanted to put a native feel to those names instead of God, or yah, we would put creator. So Jesus, and, and here's, here's something people don't understand.
Speaker 2 00:37:57 And we get people that say, oh, you can't get saved by calling on creators, that spree, you have to call on the name of Jesus. And it's the only name that, I mean, the quote ex Jolie named, given under heaven, by which we must be saved well. So what happens when you go to Mexico and you don't say, Jesus, you say, uh, he Seuss. And what if, what if there's hundreds and hundreds of Mexican people named, Hey, Seuss, you know, and in, in the time of Jesus in the time of Yeshua, his Hebrew name was a common name. It was lots of people were named Jesus or Yeshua, you know? And so it wasn't like this name had some magic NUS to it. It's the name is pointing to a person. And that person is who is important. The name needs to point you to that person.
Speaker 2 00:38:51 Well, the name Jesus, most people don't know. Wasn't, didn't come into the English language, J E S U S until about maybe 350 years ago. So it's only been around 350 years. So what happened to all the people before that, that didn't have that name to call on? Well, they called on another pronunciation in the 16, 11 king James Bible, the original one, the name Jesus, J E S U S is not in that Bible anywhere. What you have in there is I E S U S look it up. Yay. Seuss. Okay. Or EA Seuss might be the pronunciation. And so, and it came from the Greek to the Latin, to the English. And then the, the eye, which had a sort of a Y sound became hardened through culture to a J. And that's why we have Jesus. That's why we, instead of Yahweh, we have Jehovah or <inaudible> some, some might use it.
Speaker 2 00:40:12 We have Joshua. If you were going to say Joshua in the original Hebrew, you would say Yahshua, the same name that Jesus had the same name. Exactly. So we don't want people to get hung up. We're not trying to hide the name of Jesus in the sense of, of J E S U S. But that name for, I need a people has baggage. And so that prologue that we wrote, um, Bruce plumbers is, is a Montana Indian ministries, how he presents Jesus to the native people, the traditional native people. He does not use the name Jesus at all. At first, he starts with the creator and he talks about who the creator is, and then walks them from creator all the way down through. And then he introduces creator having a son. And then eventually that son is shown to have a name. But what's important is, is that the creator had a son, our native people knew about creator.
Speaker 2 00:41:17 We didn't know he had a son and we didn't know that creator called a tribal people to be the ones to bring this son into the world. And so, and so, and, and he chose one. I don't know why he did that, but he did. And so our native people, we always learn things from other tribal people. We love to share spirituality and all different things with each other. We, we adopt things from other native cultures. So to go to the, to the Hebrew tribe and to learn from them, it doesn't reduce us as natives. It doesn't take away our nativeness. It just means, oh, they've got something that we need to hear. And so they got the story of the son of creator, how creator came down and he died on dying on that tree pole, the cross. And he gave us life for all human beings, you know?
Speaker 2 00:42:14 And so we were telling the same story, but we're not using Christian and ease. You know, that this kind of religious language and church language that's been developed over, over so many years, that church people, you know, when I lived on the Hopi reservation, I was pastoring a mission church that had been there a hundred years. And sometimes we would have other churches come in and do these VBS is right, the kitchen Bible school. And I remember this one group came in and they brought all these nice little beads that had different colors, red and yellow and black and white and green. And, and, uh, they had the kids making these little beaded things that would go around their wrists, you know, and they would talk about, um, they, they, then they talked about the red is for the blah, these kids, these hoping kids would didn't grow up in church. They're like blood they're they're, they're starting to get scared. And then they talk about how ho, how he died on the cross. And he shed his blood and, and we killed them. Oh my gosh, we killed them in, in, in, in these kids are going. And then, then they say, would you like to accept Jesus in your heart? This little kid looks at it and goes, no,
Speaker 1 00:43:29 Right. Terrified. It reminds me of John six. Right? I mean, it's, it's because the story is familiar to us. We don't think about how terrifying it would be. Right. When, when, when creators that's free. I didn't read it in, in the, in the first nations version. But you know, that, that moment where he has so many step away, because he tells them you're going to have to eat my flesh and drink my blood. Hello. They're going, no, thank you. Yeah. I think I'll think I'll go back now. Uh, this, this, this preacher looked pretty good until the moment where he completely freaked me out. Right. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2 00:44:08 We grew up in sort of a church culture. And so we're hearing this kind of, you know, we sing songs, you know, oh, you know, cover me with a blood, let that fountain pour over me. And, and if you're not, if you don't understand the metaphor behind all that, you've got this picture of blood pouring all over you and how ghastly that might look to other people, you know, being washed in blood and all these pictures. And these were,
Speaker 1 00:44:37 I think it's important for us. I'm sorry. I don't know. It just doesn't think it's important for us as people, you know, if we have been raised in church, I think we have got to, you know, it was a few years ago we were sitting, it was actually during Passover. We were sitting, watching the, the Moses film, you know, 10 commandments. And I just looked at my husband. I was like, do you know how strange this is? That our entire lives, everything we do in life is because we believe that there was a man who came 2000 years ago,
Speaker 2 00:45:14 A long time and
Speaker 1 00:45:16 Died, and we didn't see it, but we trust that he rose again, which is weird. Right. And then, and then we just, we just say, I'm like, this is an odd story. This is a very odd story. And I think it does us good to see this represented in ways that are unfamiliar to our own culture, to be reminded of how beautifully bizarre our faith is.
Speaker 2 00:45:47 Right. And so there's prologue kind of, you need to set the old, it's the old Testament, it's a story of Israel. It's a story of creator and how he brought his son into the world. And so it comes up, you know, to that point. But then the story has this surprise ending that nobody expected Israel didn't expect the story to end the way it did that. Messiah would look like this, that Messiah wouldn't be one to kill all the Romans. He would be one to deal with the sins of Israel, their own sins, their own war on ways of looking at the world and looking at Roman people and wanting them to be destroyed and burn and become, uh, logs for the fires of hell and all this kind of, uh, of things that the Jewish people believed about. Gentiles had to break down that wall and, and he came to deal with human beings, you know, within cultures and to break down the, uh, the fear between cultures, Jews, and Gentiles, the greatest separation in history and, and here, the whole new Testament is written about how the apostle Paul, most of things he's dealing with in those early sacred family gatherings, the church churches, sacred family gatherings was, was this issue of Jew, Jews and Gentiles coming together.
Speaker 2 00:47:17 And how do we work all this stuff out, right? Can we eat at the same table? Can we eat the same food? Can we all have communion together? Are Jews better than Gentiles, or are Gentiles better than Jews? You know, does God love one group more than another, all this kind of these issues were all raging within the early church. And then they had the, the, the other, the false teachers coming in, you know, trying to pull people, Jewish people away. You know, the first 30 years of persecution of the believers was not from Rome. It was from their own people. It wasn't until 80, 64 that narrow fine. Finally started persecuting Christians. That's a long time after the day of Pentecost. So all the persecution up to then was, was with Jewish persecution. So there was so much going on in that early church, you know, and a lot of, uh, you know, people reading the new Testament don't understand that.
Speaker 2 00:48:17 So we added these portions in there and italics, so you don't mix them with scripture. Uh, and, and we wanted to be clear on that. So they're set apart and there's a few places where I taluks are used within the text to bring clarity, but we put it in italics because it's, it's, it could be questionable, even though we believe that's the right thing to say in many times, uh, Greek scholars that have read this have told me, I, I, they don't have any problem with any of them, you know, so it's wonderful, you know?
Speaker 1 00:48:50 Yeah. It's just, as you were talking about, um, about Paul and, and the debates and the things that, that were happening in the, in the early church and all of these letters and just, and just listening to you, convey that I just, a, this is the same story, 20, 21, it's the same story. We're still asking the same questions. Can we eat at the same table? Can we speak different languages? Can we speak the same languages? Do we, how do we relate to one another? What if, what if that person is circumcised and that person isn't, what if that person calls him creator sets free? What if that person calls him your shoe? How can we do this together? Can, you know, and we're still asking the same questions and on one hand, it's for me, you know, listening, um, it's completely disheartening that we're still asking the same questions, but on the other hand, the, the, the beauty of the Canon that God provided to us, that we're still asking the same questions, but, but we have text to help us navigate the situation.
Speaker 2 00:50:06 One of the things is what happens, and it happens in every culture, cultures become, you know, that's the way they view the world. And, and so, um, you know, I would say that Western Christian culture has a sort of a monotheistic view of our creator. And so, and so since we've kind of pulled ourselves together into, uh, sometimes in the racial groups, you know, uh, or ethnic groups and avoided that ethnic group, doesn't worship the same way as this ethnic group, then we're all divided up into all these denominations who agree on about 70% of everything. But then we get that 30% that keeps us separated and, and kind of suspicious of each other. And, uh, that's what happened with our native people. People today are still suspicious of our native culture. They think it's what it's witchcraft. They think it's paganism and all this stuff.
Speaker 2 00:51:07 And so much of it is, you know, yeah, there was witchcraft in some of our native cultures, but we knew it was bad. It wasn't a good thing in our culture. You know, it doesn't mean all of our culture was witchcraft. We actually stood against witchcraft. We didn't like the bad medicine people. We liked the good ones who prayed good prayers, who, who, uh, you know, all of our ceremonies had to do with restoring balance when things had got out of balance, that's kind of the idea of, of broken ways. And, and, uh, you know, our lives are out of harmony with creator in the spirit world. And our ceremonies are our prayers to bring us back into harmony. Again, you know, native people understood sin, but they understood it differently than we do then the, or I should the dominant culture, the way I was raised.
Speaker 2 00:51:58 And I love now that I've embraced my native heritage and immersed myself in it, and I've been mentored in it. I love the native perspective. It's given me such a, a rich depth of the understanding of who our great creator is and understanding these, these, uh, this sacred book. And I love this sacred book. And, um, I loved being part of a group of people who, who put this together and presented it in a whole new way. And it is, it is a gift to our native people from our niche, from some native people. I can't say it's from all our native people, but it's from some of us, a group of us who believe that it's important.
Speaker 1 00:52:42 Amen. Terry, tell me about some of the other things that you guys are working on and that have come out kind of, um, you know, along the same lines of the first nations version you guys also have, um, that I don't, I don't know if it's related. We, we used to call it the Jesus movie or the Jesus film back back in the day, but you guys also have a, a Jesus film project.
Speaker 2 00:53:09 Yes. Um, about halfway through the translation period, we put out some initial, uh, printings of the first nation version. At first, we did the gospel of Luke and Ephesians because we wanted to get it out there to get feedback. Yes. And someone from the Jesus film crew crew is campus crusade for campus crusade for Christ crew found that version of Luke and contacted me. And they said, they said, wouldn't it be an amazing thing to do Luke with the Jesus film that they've already produced. Right. And I said, oh, probably not. I said, you know, that, that film I, I saw the film years ago, I think it's pretty dated to be updated. I think it shows a British white Jesus, you know, and, and I, and, and things like that. And, and I said, and also it's going to be very difficult because of the way we did the translation.
Speaker 2 00:54:15 The names are long, you know, uh, our translation, I can't remember how much bigger it is than a standard English translation, because it has, uh, you know, our book has 260,000 words. Oh, it's heavy. Yeah. Well then saying, well, maybe we can do a narrative where you, you show pictures, but you don't try to match the lips and everything. And you just tell, uh, you have a storyteller telling, reading the first nation version, and then it's acted out what we thought about that. And we thought about how big of a project that would be. And I still didn't like the film we didn't, could we create a whole new one for native people and that wasn't practical at least yet. So we landed on an animated version. Yes, yes. And so, so the idea, uh, was that we would do, uh, two stories from, from Matthew of Jesus feeding the 5,000 and Jesus walking on water.
Speaker 2 00:55:17 Okay. With Peter, Peter walking on the water. And so the idea was that that I would be the narrator, the voice. And so we had to find artists. We had to find, we, we, uh, we, uh, Donnie and Renee Begay who are part of crew nations, which is cruise native ministry from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Dani is, is, um, Navajo and she's Zuni from, uh, from New Mexico. And, um, they became consultants on there along with myself and, and became eventually executive producers. How you like that? Wow. Wow. Um, but we, it took a long time to put this together. We look for native animation artists, but we weren't able to find any. So then we began to pray that that creator would show us someone who would do this. And it turns out there was, there was a guy who has such a heart for native people, and he's, he believed from the time he was doing Disney art, he did art for Disney.
Speaker 2 00:56:24 From that time he worked on, uh, Pocahontas. Okay. And, and from that time he wanted to do something, you know, he's, he left Disney and he started his own company. I think it's called premier media, something like that. Um, and his name is Dominic Corolla. And Dominic said his it's always been in his heart that he would do something to share Jesus with native people in his, in his films. And then, so we, so he came and we interviewed him and we finally said, yeah, you're the one. And he was so honoring to our culture. He, you know, he listened to us. We had so many zoom meetings with him. We went through native cultures and pictures of native, uh, uh, you know, uh, art and native, uh, old native outfits and things like this and how an Apache might dress, how a Navajo would dress, how, you know, different tribes would dress.
Speaker 2 00:57:25 And we worked all that into this animated version and it took about a year to do it, uh, because there's a lot of things going on. But the funny thing was is the people at InterVarsity press who were getting, who are, who are putting out the first nation version, we're releasing it in August. Right. Well, this was going to be released in August too. Wow. It's just so funny timing all came together. So about a month, about a month before the film was supposed to be released from the Jesus film people, um, we got inner varsity staff and crew staff working together. Wow. Because this is based on the first nation version. And so, uh, they actually say on, on this, uh, on their advertisement and you can go to their website, the Jesus film.org forward slash good story. Or you can go to first nation version.com and you will see that there's a link to, uh, to this film, to the Jesus film in there.
Speaker 2 00:58:36 Um, and you can watch it, uh, on there. And you can also, uh, th the first nation version has its own YouTube channel that you can subscribe to. And we have lots of videos there. We have videos of behind the scenes, how this film was made. We interview the people involved. Uh, Donny began. I went down there to their studios and were interviewed, and we worked with the musician. Uh, Hollywood's a guy that does Hollywood movies, and he worked with us and, and incorporated my music, my wife's eyes music with it. It's just amazing. So we decided how we would do is we'd start out with, uh, a, a storyteller, a native storyteller sitting around the fire at, at dusk. And he's telling the story to a group of native people sitting in a circle, and then it moves to the story of Jesus. Why now they did three films.
Speaker 2 00:59:31 One is the full length, six minutes. And then they did two little ones. They broke it into two separate stories with the same intro. And so you can watch a short version or a long version or whatever. And it's being used in Bible studies. It's being used by InterVarsity native ministries by crew nations. It's being used in churches in Canada. And we hope that other churches will pick this up in terms of a native churches as a, as a presenting the gospel, the good story to our native people. So that's a little bit of that story.
Speaker 1 01:00:04 Oh, that's just, that's beautiful. I love how that is. Has all come together. And I will just for the listeners, I will have all of these links in the show notes. So that'll be easy for you to click on and find some of these things. I'm looking at the, at the, um, at the site right now for the, for the film. And it's just beautiful. The animation is, is stunning. The art is beautiful. The colors are amazing. And, um, how, how cool, how cool is that? I'm thinking, I'm glad you said yes,
Speaker 2 01:00:37 Absolutely.
Speaker 1 01:00:38 I'm glad you said yes.
Speaker 2 01:00:41 And I'm glad that that crew was so excited about doing this is the first time they've ever done anything like this. And now they have this whole branch they're creating of reaching other cultures, but doing it in a cultural way. Wow. You know, instead of just, you know, kind of putting this Americanized Christian way on everybody, right. And so that's going to change. I believe our native people, uh, have a gift from creator for this land. This is our Homeland acts 17 says from one blood or one human being, uh, God created all the different tribes and nations and people groups. And it says, he decided ahead of time exactly where they would live.
Speaker 2 01:01:30 Okay. So he sent us here and he gave us this land. Okay. And so we have a special calling for this land, a special place in this land and a special authority in this land that has been unrecognized by, uh, most of the church. And I believe that when the church begins to recognize this gifting and get behind our native people and begin to take and fun, our ideas, that we're going to see some of the walls coming down between people, groups, you know, and I needed people have a gift of bringing people together. Our powwows are different tribes would all come together. We had native gatherings, inter tribal gatherings. We know how to get along with each other without forcing our specific spiritual ways on each other. And so that's a gift that creator has given us. And there's many other gifts he's given us, um, that, that are important that I can.
Speaker 2 01:02:39 Paul said, small man said the, I can't say to the feet, I don't need you. Or the hand, you know, I don't need you, but you see the nominal Christian culture has basically said, we don't need you. We know how to do this the best we don't need your way of doing it. But yes, you do. You need us, you need us to help heal this land because we are so divided in so many different ways. And that is, uh, is the fruit of the, what the seeds shown of division sown among our native people. And, and I can't go deeply into that. I, I did write another book I would recommend. Yes, it's one of my books. It's called sign language and I'm talking about creators, sign language, not Indian sign language, a look at the historic and prophetic landscape of America. And it talks about a lot of what I've been saying today. It brings the whole history in a short, a bird's eye view of the history of the U S government looking at it through the lens of native people. And then through the lens of the good road, the kingdom of God and the justice of God. And how do we, how do we reconcile this history with this land and how do we, and then what can we do to go forward? What can we do to make things better? How can healing com
Speaker 1 01:04:03 Yes. Yes. I'll, we'll link that one as well. Terry, thank you so much for letting us know about it. Um, I didn't ask you ahead of time, but, um, but as we wrap up, I'm going to, I will ask you now and it's, it's, it's an invitation, so it's, it's completely okay for you to say no. Um, but your, your words right now are stirring some things up in may and I imagine their strings and things up in the listeners too. Um, would you feel comfortable closing us out by just praying for us?
Speaker 2 01:04:41 Absolutely.
Speaker 1 01:04:42 As a, as a sacred family?
Speaker 2 01:04:44 Yes. And what I would love to do just before I praise to share a verse, amen. From the first nation
Speaker 1 01:04:52 Version. Thank you so much. Yes.
Speaker 2 01:04:54 So this is from a Feagins chapter four verses 22 through 24. Small man says, take off that worn out and stained outfit of your past life with its selfish desires and worthless ways of thinking it no longer represents who you are. You are now true human beings with new way of seeing and thinking put on the regalia of your new life for you have been made new created again, to look like the one who made you standing in a good way and walking a true and sacred path. So creator, today we come before you in the name of your son, creator sets free that many know as Jesus, we come before you asking for forgiveness, asking for healing between our peoples asking that that, that there would be a humility that would come upon all of us, that we would humble ourselves before you and humble ourselves before each other and admit to all the wrongs that have been done so that you can straighten out the path before us.
Speaker 2 01:06:20 Those, those that have been exalted to high need to come down. Those who have been pushed down into the valley need to become up. So there is a straight path for the power of your spirit to come and bring healing to our land, help the dominant culture and the native people, and all the other cultures help us to come together around the table of creator sets free the table. You gave us where, where we partake of his broken body, where we partake of his shed blood. And we take it into ourselves spiritually to bring healing to our souls, bring healing to our lives. So I pray for every listener today. I pray for your families, your relatives, your friends, all those around you. I pray for this, this nation. And I pray for the whole world. We are under a, a, um, a disease that is plaguing the whole world right now.
Speaker 2 01:07:25 And creator. We pray for your great mercy and kindness, your gift of great kindness to come upon all. We don't deserve it, but yet you don't all, you don't treat us in the way we deserve. Otherwise, we would all be wiped out right now, but you love us. And so we pray. You told us to pray. So we pray for healing. We pray for the healing of bodies. We pray for an end to this virus. We pray for, um, every, every, every person to come together. We pray for this misinformation and division in the fighting between us to come to an end. And it will take humility to humble ourselves before you and humble ourselves before each other. And we pray for this. And I thank you for this time that we've had to talk together. And, uh, we know that you've been here and that you would make everything. We've talked about a prayer as we send our voice to you in the name of creator sets free your son. Jesus, we pray and thank you. We say chimeric, which thank you so much is Yemen to do creator, which is in that way. I thank you for listening.
Speaker 2 01:08:41 Oh,
Speaker 1 01:08:43 Oh, and amen. Thank you, Terry. Thank you. This has been phenomenal. Again, I'll have the link to everything we talked about and also, um, to the main page and to a place where you can purchase, uh, the first nations version and indigenous translation of the new Testament. It is beautiful inside and out. So thank you so much for sharing with us. Terry, The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth B city. Be sure to give us a review on iTunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app, you can also visit us at that. Makes total sense.com
