Taking Christ to the Cree (fwd)

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Jamaica Gleaner Online

Taking Christ to the Cree
published: Saturday | September 2, 2006

Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20060902/news/news7.html

Cree Indians of Wemindji enjoying themselves in the snow. - Contributed

Wemindji, a small community off James Bay at the mouth of the Maquatua
River in Quebec, Canada, is home to about 1,200 Cree Indians. For many
it would represent one of the uttermost parts of the earth. But it was
home for many years to Christopher and Winsome Davis who did Christian
ministry there.

Christopher, an Anglican minister, hails from Hamilton, Ontario. He did
graduate studies at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. There he met
fellow student,Winsome Gibson, the sixth daughter of the late Harold &
Mary Gibson of Mandeville in Jamaica. Winsome is also the sister of
Children's Advocate, Mary Clarke. Christopher and Winsome married in
1981 and they have two children.

In the past 25 years, they have served in various ecclesiastical
parishes in Ontario and Quebec. However, beginning in 1987, they
devoted most of their time - 19 years in fact - to ministry among the
Cree, a tribe of native Indians. Last month they got a new posting to a
place called Kugluktuk - there they will serve Eskimos that make up the
Inuit community.

The joys

In an interview with The Gleaner conducted just before the couple
relocated, Rev. Davis, 56, focused on the joys he and his wife
experienced doing ministry to the Cree. He said, "When I married
Winsome, I thought, 'Oh good, the Lord is going to send us to some hot
country with palm trees and beaches.'

"Well, either the Lord has a sense of humour, or He gets His wires
crossed. Instead of Jamaica, we are in James Bay, Northern Quebec, one
of the coldest, most sparsely populated places on earth. We are at the
53rd latitude, which corresponds in England to Liverpool, but there the
similarity ends.

"We are in the interior of the North American continent with a severe
continental climate like Siberia. In January and February we have to be
prepared for -30°, -35°, -40° Celsius. And when it is that cold it
doesn't matter whether you think in Celsius or Fahrenheit, because at
-40° the two sets of mercury meet.

"When it is that cold, or when there is an Arctic blizzard, one hardly
ventures outdoors. Winter is exceptionally beautiful when the sun is
shining, but it is very long, and brings on a state of mind called
'cabin fever.' By March and April Winsome and I are desperate for
spring to come."

Being Canadian and married to a Jamaican was in some senses a
cross-cultural learning experience for him. Furthermore, he found that
the Cree people felt comfortable talking with Winsome because she isn't
white.

Rev. Davis explained: "Any similarity between Cree people and the image
of Indians in westerns is purely accidental. We have German tourists
who want to see Indians wearing feathers and riding horses, but they
are sorely disappointed. Today's Indians drive American-style pickup
trucks and vans and Canadian snowmobiles, and listen to the latest
country & western hits on their radios and CD players.

"When it comes to religion, Cree people are overwhelmingly Christian.
The evangelical wing of the Church of England, the Church Missionary
Society, sent missionaries 150 years ago to James Bay, and an Anglican
church was built in every village. Roman Catholics and Pentecostals
came along much later, but my village is still a solid 99 per cent
Anglican.

State religion

"Anglicanism is the state religion supported by the chief, Band Council
and village elders. No other church has been allowed to establish
itself. The village of 1,200 people is basically one huge extended
family, and everyone is related by both blood and marriage. The sense
of unity in the community is highly prized, and that is why no other
church is allowed. They want no interdenominational theological
controversies dividing them."

Among the Cree people of James Bay, the Anglican Church is seen as a
rock of stability, part of the glue holding the community together.
Many Cree, Rev. Davis said, "have a simple, uncluttered faith, and they
are quite sure that the Bible is the Word of God."

Cree people love their church, and they don't want it to change much.
Sure, add some lively country & western style guitar music, but leave
the rest alone.

Rev. Davis, an evangelical, is unhappy that sections of his denomination
have opted to endorse same-sex marriage and homosexual conduct among
clergy. His convictions are shared with the Cree community. He said,
"The Cree people who watch the news are not pleased with these
developments. Cree society is very family-oriented, and at a recent
parish council meeting a motion was passed unanimously to uphold the
Church's traditional teaching on man-woman marriage. The Cree parishes
of our diocese have made it clear that they don't like the way the
Anglican Church of Canada is going on these issues.

Though the village where the couple served had 1,200 persons, this
translated into average Sunday attendance of 115. Rev. Davis conducted
three services on a Sunday - each service in a different language. For
the Sunday morning service it was Moose Cree, the dialect spoken in
Northern Ontario. The Sunday afternoon service was in Wemindji Cree.
And the Sunday evening service was in English.

Mother tongue

Rev. Davis said almost all Cree young people have Cree as their mother
tongue - nevertheless, most of them cannot read or write their own
indigenous language. Many of these youngsters choose to worship in
English. There exists in the village, he said, a cultural tension as
the elders don't like to see the young people moving to English.
"Personally, as an outsider, I stay out of that controversy. I can't
really speak Cree, but I do the liturgy and prayers and hymns in their
language as much as I can, and the elders appreciate that," Rev. Davis
said.

The Canadian wilderness is immense, and it has an awesome, silent
majesty, Rev. Davis said. "When I am there, I am so aware of the God
who created all this. It is almost untouched by human hands. Our family
home is in Kingston, Ontario, and to get to my parish up on James Bay we
drive north for two days through 1,500km of mostly forest. In the last
600km of our trip there is only one petrol station and restaurant with
indoor toilet. One has to have a relatively new and reliable car,
because if one has a breakdown up there, it could be a matter of life
and death. You don't want a breakdown in January when it is -40°.
Freezing to death is not my cup of tea, thank you very much. You always
travel with blankets, newspaper and matches, so that you can start a
fire to keep warm. Last summer I was changing a flat tyre in the
wilderness, busy cursing under my breath, but then I remembered to
thank God this wasn't happening in January.

"It is hard for many Southern Canadians to grasp that the largest part
of Canada's land mass does not speak the country's official languages -
English and French, but all the various Native Indian and Inuit
languages. Our village, Wemindji, has 1,200 people and it is 99 per
cent Cree. Almost all Cree people are mixed. Some are dark like Indians
in Mexico or Peru, and some look like they would easily fit in back in
Scotland."

In 1670, King Charles II signed the Hudson's Bay Company charter, and
ever since then mainly Scottish fur traders have traded with the Cree
people. As a result, English is the second language for most of the
Cree. That Scottish influence, Rev. Davis observed, has had a profound
influence on Cree culture.

The Scottish influence is still evident as:

The Cree national drink is tea.

The Cree national bread is bannock.

At a Cree wedding you will see all the traditional Scottish reels.

The Cree national musical instrument is the fiddle. A few years ago a
troupe of James Bay Cree fiddlers went to the Scottish Highlands and
were a big hit. The Cree people had preserved some fiddle tunes that
had been lost in Scotland.

Many Cree people have Scottish surnames inherited from fur trader
ancestors. Common surnames in James Bay are Gilpin, Sutherland, McLeod,
Archibald, Hardisty, Stewart and Spence.

Some of the old ladies in Rev. Davis' church still wear tartan dresses
down to their ankles.

It was not harder to minister to the Cree than to white Canadians, Rev.
Davis said.

However, in many ways, the Cree were more open to the Gospel than their
Caucasian Canadian counterparts who are increasingly resistant and
event hostile.

"One thing one must always remember with a tribal group, they think more
collectively than individually. A whole family will get saved together,
rather than one individual in the family.

(Continues next week)

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