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Aboriginal Cultures and the Christ

This is a phrase used today to describe the situation of the poor of the "third world," but it is equally serviceable, properly understood, for contemporary aboriginal cultures struggling for life in North America. Manuel and Posluns have given them the title "the fourth world," or the world of aboriginal cultures oppressed by modern societies. The essay is also missiological, understanding that term to represent the character of the Church as "sent" into the world to announce good news, not so much by direct proselytizing as by working to change the conditions that obscure that good news. The "catholic" nature of the Church—its being-for-the-whole—calls it to serve the very delicate process of inviting particular cultures to participate in the world community without renouncing their own identities. Numerous xenophobic occurrences around the world during 1990 and 1991 have highlighted the Utopian nature of such a dream. But a succession of events in North America—most recently in Quebec—demonstrate painfully how that participation will have its day, whether through aboriginal peoples' being driven to the edge by exclusion and cultural invasion, or by gracious and facilitated dialogue. Nor can we overlook the basic fact that, in order to be effective, any challenge to the "aboriginal peoples" (peoples whose culture remains close to its origins) must finally come from members of those cultures themselves. The thesis of our paper, consequently, is a dangerous one, because of the constant failures of cultures everywhere to practice universal openness, and even more because the Church itself is still struggling to transcend European particularism. Nonetheless, the thesis is this: In the context of aboriginal spirituality, a historical personage with divine mandate as the Christ challenges each local culture to grow within itself, as well as to further the process of wholistic salvation within a world horizon. Indeed, it is a daunting challenge to relativize specific historical forms of Christianity that have endured for two mil-