Signs of the Times: The Church and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: In-Between Colonization and Reconciliation

In his recent book The Comeback, public intellectual John Ralston Saul, reading the signs of the times in Canada so to speak, asserted that the situation of the Indigenous Peoples is the single most important issue before us. Until not long ago, he notes, “It was clear—or so the common, self-serving argument went—that these native populations were unfortunately unsuited to the modern world. Backward. Weak. Stuck in irrelevant cultures. Much of this argument was folded into standard Victorian, imperial, Christian notions of charity.”1 This situation has been changing over the past hundred years and the Indigenous Peoples have made a comeback, observes the author. It’s a comeback to a position of self-affirmation with power that, to many observers of history, seems irreversible. Enrique Dussel calls this comeback a cultural eruption beyond modernity.2 Many Indigenous academics would prefer to call this comeback resurgence or rebirth.3 While this resurgence for many people is either not noticeable or a surprise, for the Indigenous Peoples in general it is neither. They have been preparing for it and waiting patiently for a long time, sometimes in active silence and at other times with strong protest. They saw the resurgence coming and have been announcing a new dawn for a while. But where is the church in all this?