There’s often an implied us-them dichoto­my when Quak­ers talk about Indige­nous Peo­ples so I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by com­mu­ni­ties that are both. My col­league Sharlee DiMenichi wrote about the hand­ful of month­ly meet­ings — and an entire year­ly meet­ing — in the U.S. that are major­i­ty Indige­nous.

I love com­pli­cat­ed iden­ti­ties like this. There’s a lot of dis­cern­ment that goes on about how to incor­po­rate Indige­nous and Quak­er ele­ments into life. For many, it seems a sur­pris­ing­ly nat­ur­al fit. This is true else­where, in parts of Africa and South Amer­i­ca, where mis­sion­ary Quak­ers’ beliefs meshed with the belief sys­tems of pre-colonial eth­nic groups, allow­ing an easy transition.

Also of inter­est is that these meet­ings are all Chris­t­ian, which demog­ra­phers tell us is the norm for Native Amer­i­cans today.¹ Decolo­nial­ism means some­thing very dif­fer­ent for those who are com­mit­ted to hold on to Christianity.

Indige­nous and Quak­er Both 

Explore how Native Quak­er com­mu­ni­ties hold onto their unique cul­ture while prac­tic­ing Christ-centered wor­ship cul­tur­al com­mon­al­i­ties, and shared…

Friends Journal 

1. Rough­ly 60 per­cent of Native Amer­i­cans are said to iden­ti­fy as Chris­t­ian, though there’s lots of wig­gle room about what exact­ly these terms mean.