"Sitting Bull: You must take them out of our lands.
Col. Nelson Miles: What precisely are your lands?
Sitting Bull:These are the places where my people lived before you whites first came."
-From the film Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee – based on the book by Dee Brown
One of the great myths you and I grew up with is this strange headline: "Columbus Discovered America." This blatantly Euro-centric view reflects the wrong-headed notion that centuries of Native American life and its rich culture in America were meaningless. According to this view, America didn't matter until Europeans "discovered" it. This arrogance was reflected by the shameful treatment so many Europeans inflicted on the native people they encountered
Four hundred eighty-one years after Columbus' "discovery" a group of Lakota Indians took a last stand (in 1973) against government oppression at a small South Dakota town called Wounded Knee. This story was retold again on May 11 in a PBS documentary: "We Shall Remain." What happened at Wounded Knee was perhaps the last armed attack on Native Americans by the American government. Perhaps the leadership of the band of Lakota that fought in those bloody days was wrong to choose violence. But, their frustration and righteous indignation emerges clearly in the PBS documentary.
According to the leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), Russell Means, "Wounded Knee happened because Indian people wanted to survive as
Indians and there wasn't any way to survive, so we made a stand and
made a statement, but now Indian people are beginning to rebound,
rebound according to their [concept of] 'Beauty.' And that's really
what's necessary.to understand: Indian people have to become free again."
"Free again!" Free to live their concept of Beauty.
Across history, and inside our healthcare system, there exists a chronic human temptation that entices the powerful to oppress the vulnerable. All of us need to absorb into our hearts the energy of the second part of the three-part Serenity Prayer and find, "…the courage to change the things we can." We, as caregivers, need to change healthcare – to stand up for patients against the oppression of our healthcare system.
Patients of hospitals and clients of charities wait not only for healing but for justice. As caregivers, only one question needs to live at the forefront of our consciousness. The question is not, "Does this patient have insurance?" The question is not, "Does this patient come from a culture like mine?" The only relevant question is: "What does this person need?
Europeans oppressed Native Americans because of their bias that the European way was the the only right way. Native Americans, according to this arrogant view, were "uncivilized" and needed to be "taught" (as in "forced") to live like Europeans. This meant that European ways and European religion must be shoved down the throats of "these heathen savages" as they were often called by arriving boats of Englishmen, people like my own ancestors, who came to this land in 1635.
Similarly, the American healthcare system often shoves patients into the role of second class citizens. For example, if I am doctor in a white coat and have a stethoscope draped around my neck and you are sick and wear nothing but one of those humiliating patient gowns, then, clearly, I am powerful and you are weak. It's a short step from this point to the position that I am better than you and you must do things my way.
Where is justice in all of this? Justice and healing lie in listening to the most important truth about God. God is Love. And whatever the question, Love is the answer.This is why loving caregivers work in partnership with patients, not as one kind of being trying to dominate another.
What do you think?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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