The Rev. David Wilson
Conference Superintendent Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference
Choctaw

Conference Superintendent is a role unique to the three missionary conferences in our church. We don’t serve the same role as the district superintendent. Except perhaps in Alaska Missionary Conference, we don’t do charge conferences. But rather, we provide administrative leadership, pastoral training and work very closely with the bishop to provide Indigenous leadership to the conference. Part of my job is interpretation….of who we are as a conference. I love to hear the stories of the faithfulness…that make the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference what it is today. The first annual conference was in 1844.

Oklahoma began as Indian Territory in the 1820s. Andrew Jackson as U.S. president began the removal policy. The government backed him up and said removing the tribes from across the country was for the best interest of the Native people. Actually, there were so many wonderful resources on the land; that’s what they wanted. Oklahoma is a Choctaw word meaning Red People. The Choctaw were the very first on the Trail of Tears. When you hear Trail of Tears, you think of the Cherokee because they are such a large tribe, but actually there were many Trails of Tears into what is now the state of Oklahoma. Of all the tribes of this state, only two are Indigenous; this was not our original homeland. All of us were removed from different parts of the country to what is now Oklahoma. And there are other tribes from across the country who settled in other places that would also have their own Trail of Tears. Historians tell us prior to Columbus’ arrival in this hemisphere there were probably 50 million Native people living in this part of the world. The last census recorded 2.1 million Native persons across this country. You can see the wide disparity in those numbers.

I hope people will understand how different we are and not classify us as one group of people, as many people do. There are many myths about Native American people. As you read books or watch movies, you see Native people referred to in the past. I always like to dispel that myth to help people understand the many contributions we have made to this world not only in the past, but also in the present. … We operate in this contemporary society. There are a wide variety of ways that people can educate themselves - the Internet, read a variety of books, visit the National Museum of the American Indian. It doesn’t have artifacts of the past; it talks about who we are right now.