Native American struggle for justice
excerpt from Joshua and the Promised Land
by Roy H. May, Jr.
Finally, from the Americas come voices that also find liberating values in these stories. Jace Weaver, an Oklahoma Cherokee and United Methodist pastor, believes that a biblical model for "Native American/Canaanite liberation" can be found in the account of the daughters of Zelophehad (Num. 27 and Josh. 17). He explains:
The story illustrates that all, even the most powerless and oppressed of a society, have the right to share equally in the promise of God. It says also that the oppressed must not remain silent or inactive in the face of their oppression: At every turn it is incumbent on them to remind the oppressor of God's promise and to be the heralds of their own salvation. Most important, the story has direct meaning for the story of the Canaanites.The names of the five daughters were, in fact, the names of five towns in northern Canaan in the land of Hepher. The names were taken from Numbers 26, where they were meant as towns, and reinterpreted for purposes of the allotment story. The Hepherites were not destroyed or dispossessed, moreover, but formed a religio-political alliance with the Israelites.
The story in Numbers and Joshua is the story of the maintenance of the Herpherites' cultural and territorial integrity -- an integrity that, according to the biblical witness, survived at least until the time of Solomon.
Indians are the Hepherites, Zelophehad's daughters, sharing a god with, and living in the midst of, a foreign peple, yet preserving our own identity. (5)
Foototes:
5. Jace Weaver, "A Biblical Paradigm for Native Liberation," Christianity and Crisis (February 15, 1993), p. 40. (return to text)
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