Michigan Camp Meeting 2024: As For Me and My House

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Native American Culture & Religious Beliefs

Fred Rogers

01 A Brief History of First Nations People

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2024 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Our dear Heavenly Father, we come to you today to thank you for the blessing you've given us.

We pray, Father, that you will guide and direct us as we study your Word, help us to understand it, help us to be able to apply it, help us to be able to use it to reach out to certain people.

We know that you have said that you want your gospel to go to all nations, kindreds, and tongues.

And this is looking at our Native American brothers and sisters.

We just pray that you will guide and direct in our outreach to them.

And we pray Father that these lessons will be useful in reaching native people.

Amen So do you understand what I'm saying?

You know, this is not gonna cover all the prophecies and all that stuff We don't cover and evangelist meetings and that type of thing.

You can do that as they show an interest.

Native people have always been concerned with not being very bright, not being very accepted, and that type of thing.

And as I presented these seminars in various places, I remember with the Yakima in Washington State, presented this and I had a lady come up to me and say, you know, we're so, I'm so glad to hear this because now I am proud to be a native person.

And there's a lot of native people that aren't proud of their heritage.

By the way, how many here have native heritage somewhere in their background?

This is to you to be able to try to reach those people and get an interest with them So that you can go farther with them Okay, we're going to share some things during this that is going to actually come above your mind about what native people believe.

And we're going to start with a lesson that is called a brief history, if you've got out the first 1, a brief history of Native people.

And as I said, this is not a total Adventist thing.

Now some people question why are you talking about a bit of history because we need to know something about what but why Native people are doing what they're doing because if you don't know some of those things you're not going to be able to reach people as you go try to talk to them.

And so, some native people, now I am a registered member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

And so, as I was asked to work with native people, I decided I needed to know something about the culture.

Because I didn't grow up knowing anything about my culture.

My grandfather could speak the Cherokee language, and I never knew it.

Not until he was dead, and I was an adult, that I know that my grandfather can speak Cherokee language.

Had I known, I hoped that I would make him teach me the language.

I've got a Bible here that is in English and written in Cherokee on the other side of it.

What he knew about the culture, I have no idea.

If he knew very much about native culture, I don't know.

In Oklahoma, there are about 38 different registered or baby recognized tribes.

If you're born in Oklahoma, you'll probably have Native blood somewhere, somehow.

And so that's, you know, easy to work with individuals, talk with them.

I worked for the Southern Union as a director for Native Ministries for the Southern Union and worked all over that area.

And so now in Oklahoma, and I have an opportunity, I didn't write these lessons until I got to Oklahoma and I've been encouraged to do that so this is this is a result of that being whether it's worth it or not I don't know you have to make that decision for yourself like those news the news 1 news never will we will report and you decide okay, but I have many people that have, many native people that have responded to this and said, this is fantastic, really liked it and you're going to learn some things that it's going to literally, it's going to blow you away about what native people believe.

But native people today, most native people today don't even know what their ancestors believed.

I didn't know until I decided that I need to find out something because I was asked to work with native people and take the job of director of native ministries in the Southern Union.

So I said, I need to know something about what they believe, you know, what they teach.

When I studied, I was like, Well, enough of that.

By the way, if you have any questions or anything, any time, feel free, or any comments.

So we're gonna look at First Nations Learning Center, a brief history, and some of you said that you are, have native blood.

Do you know anything about your native culture?

Okay, where did you learn anything about your native culture?

After my father died, we start by the reservation because my father, he didn't realize he was a child for me and he had to have some respect.

And my father said, we didn't talk about it because his father was taken away from him and he put me in a different family.

My wife and I lived somewhere, anyway, We were both born in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma was a different animal when it came to the native people.

Like I said, there's 38 different tribes in Oklahoma.

And you know something about the history of the land rush, you know, the 1800s when they opened up the land wherever he wanted to take.

They gave the Indian people each 160 acres.

Unless you were Osage, Osage got 540 or whatever section is.

So, but Cherokees, there were too many of us.

They gave us land and said, okay, here's your land, make a living.

Actually, it was a blessing because I've worked in South Dakota, High Ridge Indian Reservation.

It can be a pretty sad situation when you look there.

Well, they were placed on a reservation and then the government gave them what they wanted to eat and that type of thing and you know what happened?

I don't know if it's changed, but when I was there, I saw people lying on the sidewalks in the villages because they were intoxicated.

And so, but in Oklahoma, I considered a blessing because it wasn't a reservation.

So, everybody was just kind of thrown in with everybody else because my grandfathers and grandmothers and grandfathers land was completely surrounded by men and lady people and so they had to live with everybody and get along.

My grandfather thought it was best not to be a lady.

Just be quiet about it, not say anything.

My oldest brother, he's passed away now, told me that he remembered as a little boy that our grandfather grew up into the town of Muskogee, Oklahoma.

And he would sit down on the street up there and a lot of the old native people would get together and they would, you know, talk in Cherokee.

So he knew that he spoke Cherokee, But I didn't.

But he thought it was best not to be a native person.

So he just didn't go because there was prejudice.

There was lots of things that were done that You know made it difficult for them.

So it's better just to blend in not be a native person.

So there was a blessing in that, in that we don't, we didn't have the alcoholism and that type of thing in Oklahoma because of that very fact and so that was really a blessing.

So how did you learn about your native culture?

02 Native Peoples Bible and Jesus Knowledge

Our dear Heavenly Father, we come to You today to thank You for the blessing You've given us.

We pray that You will guide and direct us as we study today.

Help us to learn things, Father, that will enlighten us in the study of Jesus.

And Father, we just thank you so much for the opportunity we have of studying together and we pray that you'll bless Us for your Holy Spirit is our prayer in Jesus name.

Amen For those of you that walked in late I said after I gave all the things that I did yesterday that I usually stress that I'm not trying to start the Indian Wars again because some people would look at that in the way of saying, hey, we were treated so badly we need to stand up and do whatever.

We've got to leave it in the hands of the Lord, right?

So I didn't have that problem because I grew up in Oklahoma where the land rush took place.

They were surrounded by non-native people.

And so you just had to live and get along.

So I didn't experience the reservation lifestyle, which I feel very sorry for some of those individuals that did do that, and I know a lot of people that got off those reservations so that they wouldn't have to live that life and they could live a full life without any problems or whatever.

But we do know that what happened to the Native Americans took away a lot of their culture.

My father attended Chilaco Indian School, which is in Oklahoma, and it was interesting.

You know, he didn't talk a lot about it, but he did tell us some stories.

He didn't really have the culture anyway.

Didn't want to, but my father was so honored that they finally, finally he ran away and they didn't go look for him.

His last stunt was he got in a race with the wagon pulling, I thought it was a milk wagon, but my brother said it was a garbage wagon.

And he got in a race with another wagon and they strew stuff all over the campus and everything.

And so when he ran away there, they said, we don't want him back.

So that was kind of some of my culture, elder that he was talking about culture earlier, just a bit ago.

And so anyway, we're gonna look at, did the native people, what did they think about the Bible Jesus?

I think I'm going to show some things that are really going to blow your mind.

Now, many native people claim to be traditionalists.

A traditionalist means that you want to live as your ancestors lived, and you want to worship and so forth as your ancestors.

So you want to live that traditional life.

And there's some good things in living that traditional life.

The Pima Indians, for instance, out in Arizona, they have the highest occurrence of diabetes of any ethnic group.

Even They have the highest occurrence of diabetes of any native group.

Years ago they split and there was a part of them that said, we want to live our traditional life.

Now the Pimas in Arizona have the highest occurrence of diabetes of any ethnic group.

The group that moved down to, I'm getting into something else, I guess I'm, anyway, I'll be okay.

They moved down there, lived their traditional life, and guess what?

So at any rate, you can take something from that about the lifestyle that they were living at that time.

At any rate, these people are traditionalists.

And when I talk to people, I say, I'm a traditionalist.

I Say, yeah, I'm a Christian traditionalist because I want to practice what our native people practice in their religion.

And you're going to be surprised what we find out about that.

So we have those individuals that want to follow some of the traditional things.

And you know, the interesting thing about it is many of them don't even know what their ancestors believed.

They don't know what their ancestors practiced.

Therefore, you know, they claim that we don't believe in Jesus because we're traditionalists and our people didn't believe in Jesus.

I said, wait a minute, maybe you need to back up and do a little looking into your ancestry to see if they did or did not believe in Jesus.

So at any rate, we're going to take a look at this.

And did native people believe in the Bible Jesus?

So that's what we're going to look at today.

In our first 2 lessons, we established that Native people were living by the concepts of the Bible, you know, being happy, being honest, being kind, and we went all over those things, the fruits of the Spirit, and we know that they did that.

So remember...let me see here, I didn't go there.

Should we be able to use the same Bible concepts to establish what we believe?

I mean, you know, those are the things that becomes a part of Christianity, being that kind of a person, being a kind person, honest person, and that type of thing.

And so the native people were very honest.

I could tell you stories about individuals telling about 1 individual that was wanting to do some exploring, a native place, and so he found a native person that was going to be his guide, and would be his guide for a certain amount of money, so he gave him some gold, a piece of gold, to guide him, and he was at this lodge that this Indian lived in and he was surprised that the Indian took the piece of gold and went over and laid it up on a log on his cabin outside of his cabin.

He said, there's not a white man within 100 miles.

Okay, what is the central theme of the Bible?

So if that's the central theme of the Bible and the native people were practicing Bible concepts, Hey, maybe they had Jesus in their sights.

John 14, verse 6, Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, the life, and no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.

So they need to know Jesus if they're going to be in the kingdom, right?

It said, nobody comes to the Father but by Me.

So, hopefully, they're going to have Jesus in their lives during this time.

Now, I told you I'd bring my books, and I did bring my books.

And I don't have a table in here to spread them out.

But at any rate, if you want to take a look at these when it's over, you're welcome to.

If you want to take pictures of them, write them down, what they are, whatever.

That book right there, that's what I'm showing up there, which is the history of the Cherokee Indians by Emmett Starr and interesting thing.

Cherokee member Emmett Starr was born in 1870 and later became a physician.

He graduated from Barnes Medical College at St.

Now he was probably the first Cherokee Indian that became a physician.

I know he was not the first Indian that became a physician because it was a lady that became a physician.

And I don't know anything about her history.

I had her name, I don't have it with me right now, but I did know her name.

And she became the first Native American to go to medical school and become a physician.

03 Native Peoples Similarities to Israel

Our dear Heavenly Father, we come to You today to thank You for the blessings You've given us.

We thank You, Father, for the opportunity we have come in learning from Your Word.

We just pray in a special way that You will show us what You want us to do and how to do it.

Help us to be able to not only reach Native Americans, but all people of all ends, because we need to be 1 culture as Elder Seward has been teaching in his class.

And that is under the banner of Jesus Christ.

We thank You, Father, for hearing our prayers.

We're going to talk about the seventh sacred direction today.

You know what I'm going to talk about in that?

You know what I'm talking about in the seventh sacred direction?

We're going to be talking about the Sabbath.

So again here, at the end of this series that I have here if you look at the slides, you get down to the end, I go into the things about the Catholic Church teaches about the change of the Sabbath and so forth.

We're just going to look at the things how you may see that the Native Americans are already doing that because you're going to convince them that they were doing what the Bible teaches.

And again, as we show these things, what's really interesting to me, I'm probably going to get ahead of myself a little bit here.

But the interesting thing is is that you're going to show native people that the Seventh-day Adventist church is living the life and teaching the things that their ancestors taught.

If you come to the Seventh-day Adventist church, actually, you're just coming home.

And so you can really be a traditionalist.

And of course, you know what happened to us.

If you read Isaiah 58, it tells us that He was going to call a people who was going to do what?

They were going to straighten the paths to walk in.

Did you ever wonder why He didn't give it to the Reformers?

I mean, you know, like the Sabbath and some of the other things.

Because these guys were pretty smart people.

And it's obvious that the Lord called them to do what they did, but He didn't take them all the way through to everything.

But in Isaiah 58, in my opinion, as I read that, is that He called the people to repair the breach, make paths straight to walk in, and I think that's us.

I think it was us that He called to do that.

Okay, we're going to look at the seventh sacred direction.

But we're going to just review a little bit on the similarities of Israel.

You remember all the things we said they were similar?

Well, I'll just name a few and we'll look at a few others that's not on the screen.

But what about the cities of refuge that they would set up but the God told the children is set up the cities of refuge and that if he must have harmed some of his family and so he's chasing him down to to you know to make it even and of course he comes to the city of refuge and once he gets inside the city refuge, he's protected until the courts or whoever is making the decisions makes a decision whether or not he should be punished or that type of thing.

And the numbers in Numbers 35, 11 tells us, Then ye shall appoint your cities of cities of refuge for you, that the slayer may flee thither, which killeth any person unawares.

And of course back in those days, the family members might come back and just pay you back.

And so the person could go to the city refuge.

Now I'm going to look at some of the things from this book right here, James Adair's book called Cherokee Beliefs and Practices of the Ancients.

I don't know exactly why it has that particular title because he lived among most of the southeastern tribes and he's buried down there in North Carolina.

So he worked with all these tribes in the area, so it wasn't just Cherokees.

According to the same particular divine law of mercy, each of these Indian nations have either a house or a town of refuge.

Now yesterday I mentioned to you, remember about Nui Chota?

Anyone ever visit Nui Chota down close to Calhoun, Georgia?

You can go there and visit that park there and it's called Nui Chota and actually it was the last capital of the Cherokee nation before they were removed out and brought to Oklahoma.

And they have a park there, they have cabins there, you know, they were, what's the word I'm looking for?

Not the real cabins of course, but they were duplicates of those cabins.

And I love going there because 1 of the cabins out in the back, guess who it belonged to?

Ah, yeah, it was a grandpa of mine that lived there.

And his son, Charles Rogers, married a granddaughter of Nancy Ward.

Married Nancy Ward and that's where my grandparents came down through the line.

But at any rate, they had towns of Refuge.

And I mentioned yesterday that I was over in Hawaii and on the island of Malakai, and I talked about this, and the individual came to me afterwards and said, if you want to, I can take you down the road and show you the ruins of the city of refuge for the island of Malakai.

So I kind of have the idea that after the Tower of Babel and people were, languages were confused and people were dispersed, that people started coming across the islands, maybe the Polynesian islands, and come all the way over to Hawaii, and then from Hawaii, they came on over to South America, South Central America, my theory.

They had all those things going around across there.

Okay, the children of Israel also were instructed to build a sanctuary and to furnish it, right?

You know, they let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them, the Creator instructed, and they shall make an ark of shunned wood." Exodus 25, 8 and 10.

Now they used that ark many times that would take it into battle.

1 time, you remember, they took it into battle and they lost the thing.

But at any rate, of course, they were carried around Jericho and carried the arc around that.

And of course, the walls of Jericho fell down.

Series

Native American Culture & Religious Beliefs

04 Seventh Sacred Direction Belief

Transcript

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