Updated with missing Dean Blackwell info.
Wovoka, the Northern Paiute prophet also known as Jack Wilson, received his defining vision during the solar eclipse of 1 January 1889. He reported dying, traveling to heaven, speaking with God, and returning with a commission: live morally, work peacefully, and dance a traditional round dance so that the dead would return, the land would be renewed, and a new age would begin. In the letters he sent to visiting delegations he wrote that “Jesus is now upon the earth. He appears like a cloud.” Many of those delegates—Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho and others—took the words literally. They understood Wovoka himself as the physical return of Christ, the long-awaited Messiah who would restore the ancestors and sweep away the catastrophe of reservation life. Some later accounts describe him displaying marks on his hands and feet. Wovoka himself, speaking later to the ethnographer James Mooney, presented himself as a prophet rather than as Christ incarnate. The distinction mattered less to the people who had traveled hundreds of miles to hear him. They needed a Messiah who spoke their language of loss and renewal.
Wovoka’s message was already a synthesis. Raised after his father’s death in the household of the Presbyterian rancher David Wilson, he absorbed English, Bible stories, and millennial expectation. He also knew the earlier 1870 Ghost Dance associated with the Paiute dreamer Wodziwob, Great Basin round-dance ceremonialism, and elements of the Indian Shaker Church. The resulting religion was neither a simple borrowing of Christianity nor a purely Indigenous revival. It was a Paiute response, in Christian vocabulary, to the collapse of the old world. The dance spread because it addressed immediate hunger, disease, and dispossession, not because participants first consulted a table of nations.
He did not always claim to be Jesus. In later interviews with ethnographer James Mooney he described himself as a prophet who had received a revelation. However, he spoke of Jesus being “now upon the earth” and appearing “like a cloud,” referenced resurrection of the dead, and in some accounts allowed or encouraged stigmata-like marks on his hands and feet. Visiting delegations from the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other Plains tribes frequently interpreted him as the physical return of Christ—the long-awaited Messiah who would restore the ancestors, renew the land, and remove white settlers. Some accounts quote him identifying with the Jesus who had earlier been rejected and killed by whites. This tribal reading turned a relatively pacifist Paiute teaching into a more apocalyptic hope among groups facing reservation confinement, buffalo collapse, and cultural pressure.
The resulting Ghost Dance spread rapidly. Participants danced in circles, sometimes for days, often around a central pole or tree representing the Messiah. Among the Lakota it acquired “ghost shirts” believed to offer protection, an intensification Wovoka himself did not originate. U.S. authorities viewed the movement as a threat; the tensions contributed to the Wounded Knee massacre in December 1890. Wovoka later expressed sorrow that his message had been reinterpreted in ways that brought violence.
This episode sits inside a much longer pattern of Christianity among Native American peoples. Catholic missions began in the Spanish and French colonial periods; Protestant missions expanded in the 19th century. Conversion was sometimes coerced, sometimes pragmatic, and sometimes sincere. Over time many communities produced hybrid forms rather than simple replacement of older ways.
Examples of blending include:
Armstrongism for some strange reason had never made any attempt to recruit native Americans, though the church had many in the Arizona/Utah strip. It certainly would never have had any historical or organizational tie to Wovoka, the Ghost Dance, or widespread Native messianic movements. Armstrongist literature did occasionally mention native Americans in the British Israelism mythology. In our literature Native Americans were instead identified as descendants of Tiras, son of Japheth (Genesis 10), not as Israelites.
Dean Blackwell promoted and identified American Indians as descendants of Tiras, a son of Japheth listed in Genesis 10:2 and 1 Chronicles 1:5. The 1957 WCG reprint article “Where Did the American Indian Come From?” argued that Tiras’s descendants migrated from Asia Minor through the Black Sea region and eventually reached the Americas. It linked tribal names such as Tarascan, Tinné (Thyni), Amazons (near the Amazon River), Mayas, Dures, Turas, and others to Tiras. Physical descriptions from ancient sources—reddish-brown skin and long black hair worn in a crest—were said to match Native American features. Some traditions of an eastern origin across water were cited in support. Blackwell’s presentations aligned with this framework rather than originating a separate theory.
Blackwell worked within the narrow myths of Aremstrongism that treated Genesis 10 as a finished ethnographic map of the post-Flood world. In that framework every people must descend from one of Noah’s sons. The American Indian, whose presence in the Western Hemisphere seemed to leave a blank in the Table of Nations, was assigned to Tiras, the last-named son of Japheth. The argument, circulated in The Plain Truth and Ambassador College materials, ran as follows: Tiras settled in Asia Minor and along the Black Sea (the river Tyras/Dniester); his descendants appear in classical sources under names such as Tauri, Thyni, Carians, and Amazons; those same names, or close variants, reappear among Native groups (Tarascan, Tinne/Athabaskan, Maya, Amazon); therefore the main migration into the Americas came east-to-west across the Atlantic rather than west-to-east across Beringia. Skin color on Minoan frescoes, the Nahuatl root atl (“water”), temple names like teocalli, and traditions of bearded white culture-heroes were offered as supporting links.
Wovoka’s message was already a synthesis. Raised after his father’s death in the household of the Presbyterian rancher David Wilson, he absorbed English, Bible stories, and millennial expectation. He also knew the earlier 1870 Ghost Dance associated with the Paiute dreamer Wodziwob, Great Basin round-dance ceremonialism, and elements of the Indian Shaker Church. The resulting religion was neither a simple borrowing of Christianity nor a purely Indigenous revival. It was a Paiute response, in Christian vocabulary, to the collapse of the old world. The dance spread because it addressed immediate hunger, disease, and dispossession, not because participants first consulted a table of nations.
He did not always claim to be Jesus. In later interviews with ethnographer James Mooney he described himself as a prophet who had received a revelation. However, he spoke of Jesus being “now upon the earth” and appearing “like a cloud,” referenced resurrection of the dead, and in some accounts allowed or encouraged stigmata-like marks on his hands and feet. Visiting delegations from the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other Plains tribes frequently interpreted him as the physical return of Christ—the long-awaited Messiah who would restore the ancestors, renew the land, and remove white settlers. Some accounts quote him identifying with the Jesus who had earlier been rejected and killed by whites. This tribal reading turned a relatively pacifist Paiute teaching into a more apocalyptic hope among groups facing reservation confinement, buffalo collapse, and cultural pressure.
The resulting Ghost Dance spread rapidly. Participants danced in circles, sometimes for days, often around a central pole or tree representing the Messiah. Among the Lakota it acquired “ghost shirts” believed to offer protection, an intensification Wovoka himself did not originate. U.S. authorities viewed the movement as a threat; the tensions contributed to the Wounded Knee massacre in December 1890. Wovoka later expressed sorrow that his message had been reinterpreted in ways that brought violence.
This episode sits inside a much longer pattern of Christianity among Native American peoples. Catholic missions began in the Spanish and French colonial periods; Protestant missions expanded in the 19th century. Conversion was sometimes coerced, sometimes pragmatic, and sometimes sincere. Over time many communities produced hybrid forms rather than simple replacement of older ways.
Examples of blending include:
- The Ghost Dance itself, which used Christian millennial language and ethics inside an Indigenous ritual frame.
- The Native American Church (Peyote Road), which treats peyote as a sacrament given by the Creator, often compared to Communion, while teaching a moral code that overlaps with Christian commandments and emphasizing prayer, family, and sobriety. Some branches explicitly call it the Native American Church of Jesus Christ.
- Indian Shaker Church, another 19th-century movement that combined shaking/healing rites with Christian elements.
- Local practices such as Native-language hymns, powwows dedicated to Jesus, dual participation (attending both church and traditional ceremonies), and Catholic or Protestant services that incorporate kinship values, generosity, and land-centered spirituality.
Armstrongism for some strange reason had never made any attempt to recruit native Americans, though the church had many in the Arizona/Utah strip. It certainly would never have had any historical or organizational tie to Wovoka, the Ghost Dance, or widespread Native messianic movements. Armstrongist literature did occasionally mention native Americans in the British Israelism mythology. In our literature Native Americans were instead identified as descendants of Tiras, son of Japheth (Genesis 10), not as Israelites.
Dean Blackwell promoted and identified American Indians as descendants of Tiras, a son of Japheth listed in Genesis 10:2 and 1 Chronicles 1:5. The 1957 WCG reprint article “Where Did the American Indian Come From?” argued that Tiras’s descendants migrated from Asia Minor through the Black Sea region and eventually reached the Americas. It linked tribal names such as Tarascan, Tinné (Thyni), Amazons (near the Amazon River), Mayas, Dures, Turas, and others to Tiras. Physical descriptions from ancient sources—reddish-brown skin and long black hair worn in a crest—were said to match Native American features. Some traditions of an eastern origin across water were cited in support. Blackwell’s presentations aligned with this framework rather than originating a separate theory.
Blackwell worked within the narrow myths of Aremstrongism that treated Genesis 10 as a finished ethnographic map of the post-Flood world. In that framework every people must descend from one of Noah’s sons. The American Indian, whose presence in the Western Hemisphere seemed to leave a blank in the Table of Nations, was assigned to Tiras, the last-named son of Japheth. The argument, circulated in The Plain Truth and Ambassador College materials, ran as follows: Tiras settled in Asia Minor and along the Black Sea (the river Tyras/Dniester); his descendants appear in classical sources under names such as Tauri, Thyni, Carians, and Amazons; those same names, or close variants, reappear among Native groups (Tarascan, Tinne/Athabaskan, Maya, Amazon); therefore the main migration into the Americas came east-to-west across the Atlantic rather than west-to-east across Beringia. Skin color on Minoan frescoes, the Nahuatl root atl (“water”), temple names like teocalli, and traditions of bearded white culture-heroes were offered as supporting links.
In a 1979 Bible study on Acts 17, Blackwell referenced Psalm 74:17 ("Thou hast set all the borders of the earth") and explained that God designed different groups for specific regions: "God really made the Blacks where they were best to dwell on the rich continent of Africa and God made the Orientals by their features, they're the best qualified to dwell in Asia; and God made the Shimites whereby their features, they're the best able to dwell in the territory that He put them in." Native Americans were implicitly placed in the Americas under the same principle of divinely assigned borders.
Blackwell presented WCG's racial teachings to many congregations in the 1970s. According to accounts of those presentations, the church's oral tradition (shaped by British Israelism) placed descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh-identified as the British and American peoples-at the top of a hierarchy that would rule other nations eternally "for the good of all humanity." Other groups, including people of color, occupied lower positions. Blackwell cited Deuteronomy 32:8-9 as support: God divided mankind and set boundaries "according to the number of the sons of Israel." Critics of the teaching have noted that the verse more likely refers to "sons of God" in older textual traditions and that Blackwell's application extended it into an eternal political arrangement. He also applied Isaiah 19 in ways that emphasized service to Israel. Afro-American members, he claimed, accepted the explanation once given. Native Americans, as descendants of Tiras (Japheth), fell into the category of Gentile nations under this scheme.
These views were part of WCG's mid-20th-century interpretation of prophecy, the Millennium, and the Kingdom of God, in which converted members of "Israelitish" descent would serve as rulers and teachers. The teachings treated racial and national differences as God-ordained rather than purely cultural or environmental
The method is characteristic of Armstrongist ethnology. It privileges name resemblance over systematic linguistics, treats isolated classical notices as tribal genealogies, and assumes the Bible’s silence on the Western Hemisphere must be filled by the one remaining Japhethite. Daniel G. Brinton’s 1891 The American Race is quoted for the Tarascan god Taras, yet Brinton himself was recording surface similarities, not writing a migration history. “Amazon,” “Maya,” and “Tinne” belong to unrelated language families (Tupi-Guarani, Mayan, Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit) and are not demonstrably the same words as the classical ethnonyms. Nahuatl teocalli (“god-house”) and Greek theos are coincidental. The Atlantic takes its name from the Greek Atlas, not from an indigenous atlan. Limited pre-Columbian contacts—Norse in Vinland, possible Polynesian traces in South America—do not account for the founding populations of two continents.
Modern evidence points the other way. Archaeology, craniofacial studies, and especially genetics place the primary ancestry of Native Americans in Siberian and East Asian populations that crossed Beringia in the late Pleistocene, with later Holocene movements and modest extra-continental admixture. Mitochondrial haplogroups A, B, C, D and X, and Y-chromosome haplogroup Q, form a coherent New World pattern whose closest relatives lie in Asia, not the Aegean or Thrace. Josephus identified Tiras with the Thracians; later commentators linked the name to Sea Peoples (Teresh/Tursha) or Tyrsenians. None of those Mediterranean groups match Native American genomes or the deep time depth of American linguistic diversity.
Wovoka himself sits awkwardly inside the Tiras scheme. A Northern Paiute of Mason Valley, Nevada, he inherited Great Basin ceremonialism, the 1870 Ghost Dance, and Christian language absorbed while living with the Wilson family. His 1889 vision spoke of the return of the dead, the restoration of the land, and a moral code that mixed Paiute ethics with images of Jesus and coming judgment. The dance spread because it answered the catastrophe of the 1880s, not because dancers believed themselves descendants of Black Sea Tauri. Armstrongist writers who later mapped all Indians onto Tiras were doing, in reverse, what Wovoka had done: folding a living Native prophet into a closed biblical genealogy so that no people would be left outside Scripture. The difference is decisive. Wovoka's synthesis grew from Paiute experience and the crisis on the ground. The Tiras identification grew from a mid-twentieth-century need to complete Genesis 10.
The contrast illuminates two different afterlives of the same vision. Across Indian Country, Christianity took root in many forms-Catholic missions, Protestant churches, the Native American Church with its peyote sacrament and Christian moral language, Indian Shaker practice, Native-language hymns, and dual participation in both church and traditional ceremony. Today a majority of Native Americans identify as Christian while continuing to honor language, kinship, land, and ceremony. These living syntheses, like Wovoka's dance, grew from particular histories of loss and endurance. The Tiras theory, by contrast, was an attempt to make that history fit a table of names.
In short, Wovoka's movement is one vivid late-19th-century example of how Christian ideas of a returning Messiah, resurrection, and a renewed earth could be received and recast inside Native frameworks. Many Native people have since made Christianity their own while retaining heritage; Armstrongism remained a separate, Europe-focused interpretive system with only passing ethnographic interest in Native origins.
Wovoka's letters still speak more directly than any later ethnology: Jesus is now upon the earth. He appears like a cloud. The dead are alive again. Dance, live cleanly, and do not be afraid when the earth shakes. That message was heard, reinterpreted, and danced by people who already knew who they were.
Modern evidence points the other way. Archaeology, craniofacial studies, and especially genetics place the primary ancestry of Native Americans in Siberian and East Asian populations that crossed Beringia in the late Pleistocene, with later Holocene movements and modest extra-continental admixture. Mitochondrial haplogroups A, B, C, D and X, and Y-chromosome haplogroup Q, form a coherent New World pattern whose closest relatives lie in Asia, not the Aegean or Thrace. Josephus identified Tiras with the Thracians; later commentators linked the name to Sea Peoples (Teresh/Tursha) or Tyrsenians. None of those Mediterranean groups match Native American genomes or the deep time depth of American linguistic diversity.
Wovoka himself sits awkwardly inside the Tiras scheme. A Northern Paiute of Mason Valley, Nevada, he inherited Great Basin ceremonialism, the 1870 Ghost Dance, and Christian language absorbed while living with the Wilson family. His 1889 vision spoke of the return of the dead, the restoration of the land, and a moral code that mixed Paiute ethics with images of Jesus and coming judgment. The dance spread because it answered the catastrophe of the 1880s, not because dancers believed themselves descendants of Black Sea Tauri. Armstrongist writers who later mapped all Indians onto Tiras were doing, in reverse, what Wovoka had done: folding a living Native prophet into a closed biblical genealogy so that no people would be left outside Scripture. The difference is decisive. Wovoka's synthesis grew from Paiute experience and the crisis on the ground. The Tiras identification grew from a mid-twentieth-century need to complete Genesis 10.
The contrast illuminates two different afterlives of the same vision. Across Indian Country, Christianity took root in many forms-Catholic missions, Protestant churches, the Native American Church with its peyote sacrament and Christian moral language, Indian Shaker practice, Native-language hymns, and dual participation in both church and traditional ceremony. Today a majority of Native Americans identify as Christian while continuing to honor language, kinship, land, and ceremony. These living syntheses, like Wovoka's dance, grew from particular histories of loss and endurance. The Tiras theory, by contrast, was an attempt to make that history fit a table of names.
In short, Wovoka's movement is one vivid late-19th-century example of how Christian ideas of a returning Messiah, resurrection, and a renewed earth could be received and recast inside Native frameworks. Many Native people have since made Christianity their own while retaining heritage; Armstrongism remained a separate, Europe-focused interpretive system with only passing ethnographic interest in Native origins.
Wovoka's letters still speak more directly than any later ethnology: Jesus is now upon the earth. He appears like a cloud. The dead are alive again. Dance, live cleanly, and do not be afraid when the earth shakes. That message was heard, reinterpreted, and danced by people who already knew who they were.
27 comments:
As far as I can tell, all religions have miracle stories, divinely inspired men, visions from some god, and fulfilled prophecies. None of it can really be proven unless the "proof" comes from believing the stories passed down from "witnesses" who cannot be cross examined because they died decades, centuries, or millennia ago.
Awesome! Thank you for the additional insights into the history of our shared country, and the shared Christisn experience as well!
BB
Yeah, but in this case, I find what the Native Americans have to say to be much more credible! Us white guys have ancestors who broke all the treaties. Read up on "Trail of Tears". If you have any Native friends, ask them about "boarding school".
Whenever native groups get brought up in regards to Christianity, I always refer to the interaction on the island of Malta with Paul in Acts 28 which is vastly different from the Columbus story. The natives thought the viper snake would take Paul out, but he was protected by God. Of course the healing miracles followed, and many of the natives were healed even though they didn’t share the same faith.
Anyhow the idea of being one with nature or the idea of having great respect towards the land was always associated with the natives. The native Americans had that connection to the land and respecting God’s creation with its animals. Some of those qualities continued where they could. People should read Columbus's letters when he first encountered the natives.
Tank
Excellent essay. If I can add my two cents. I hold the opinion that the Nineteenth Century was a time of great religious turmoil on the North American continent. It ran about 100 years and began in 1790. It was called the Second Great Awakening. It covers the emergence of the Millerites about midway through and its final chapter was written among Native Americans in the form of the Messianic Ghost Dance movement. American society was stressed and Americans began to look for deliverance. This quest for deliverance then metamorphosed into apocalypticism. Out of this roiling cauldron was poured a number of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century religious movements such as Armstrongism.
Back when I was a good Armstrongist, I thought there was evidence that the Tribe that I belong to was descended from Tiras. I used the Hoeh methodology of identifying similarities in names. The Deity of the Tribe was called Tirawa. I thought this was just another form of the name Tiras. The word for buffalo was Taraha which is similar to the Greek Tauros and suggests that maybe the Tribe came out of the Greek sphere like the classical Tirasians. When you hang out with silliness you become silly. The genetics presented in this fine article doesn’t lie.
Scout
Fascinating post. This is very new for me, as a non American. The US certainly has a varied religious history. And that shows on our religious broadcasting here in New Zealand. Mainly from the US, with some local content also. What they all have in common is the almost continuous call for funding, for offerings, or your love gift. By check, credit card or PayPal now, just pick up the phone now or send those dollars in. Some of the programs are from the seventh day Adventists. Like watching a rerun of the old wwcog services, and especially their prophecy updates. Keep these posts coming. Cheers.
The very 1st Church of God bulletins of the 1860's mention native Americans roaming about member cabins in the Dakota's. (alrhough the reprimande grandma Johnson gets "for smoking the pipe" are more interesting). Also coupke of COG's in the Oklahoma Territories late 1800's.
In Mexico I visited "local" Catholic Churches.... A Catholic Vibe yes..... Yet many customs and "dolls" that definitely were not "Catholic" but indigineous.
Most of WCG ideas about native Americans entered through "Dr" Rhea..... and as most WCG extra biblical ideas were nothing more than rehashed 33rd degree Scottish rite Masonry.
Nck
Key thing to remember is that Wovoka was the exception when it comes to the Ghost Dance. It originated in and developed from American Indian spiritualism, not any form of Christianity. This fellow simply rolled some Christian imagery and terminology into it.
I explained this to “Scout“ when he posted his little comment discussing this stuff. He never did get back to me there. Apparently that comment led to this writeup.
Interesting that these Indians were praying for the end of the force that had ended their repeated cycles of conquest, rape, and enslavement. However, they have apparently understood now the benefits of their arrival of the White man. They serve in the American military, and they tend to vote conservative.
“For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Take note, I have told you beforehand. So, if they say to you, ‘Look! He is in the wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look! He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it.” (NRSV, Matthew 24:24-26)
A sidebar. First, let me say, I have great sympathy with what happened to Native Americans in the loss of this continent. I am not saying that I approve what their society was before it fell to the Europeans. Like all the human societies I have ever read about, the sins were great. The enmity and division between Native American tribes is something that I witnessed in my early years. The Caddoan people, to which I belong, disliked and distrusted the neighboring Siouan. The Siouan people had the same view of the Caddoans.
I just sympathize with the sheer human suffering. Native Americans experienced what the Armstrongists are fond of describing as the near future of the United States. Native Americans experienced the Apocalypse. They were invaded by swarms of strange people bearing magical weapons and spreading bizarre diseases and a few decades later they had been nearly exterminated. It was like Gerald Waterhouse and his fictional, grisly description of the Assyrians invading the United States. Only it really happened to Native Americans.
My main point is that Armstrongists are victims of George Santayana’s famous statement: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Armstrongists and other modern-day apocalyptic Millerites don’t seem to have learned anything from the Great Disappointment of 1844 or the Ghost Dance event among Native Americans. So you have the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 and the Waco Siege in 1973 – both cut from the same false Parousiac cloth. But I must admit, when I was an Armstrongist, I was just as naïve.
Scout
There was quite a bit of "soft" racism prevalent at Ambassador College while I attended, nck. We had any number of ministers born and raised in redneck areas, and they really embraced the "times of the gentiles" and "minds of wild animals" teachings. Students who were not from Western European backgrounds had to listen to their heritages being slurred, (by the ministers in the classroom!) and when some students did not seem to like all of the rules, others would make remarks like "Oh, that's because he's Italian!, you know, mind of the gentiles!" Or, "Did you know that she's got a lot of Indian blood? They are just very unstable by nature!" But it seems that the feeding frenzy got around to everybody. Remarks would be made that so and so's IQ was so high that God cannot work with him during this era. And, of all things, Herbert used to say that he had never met a truly converted Jew! Fathom that! (I think that Stan the man remodeled Herbie's mentalities in that regard later in the game) Blatantly racist jokes were told in Ambassador Club! Dr. Martin Luther King certainly got trashed. The prevailing attitudes were just so provincial, and systemic that they became a part of the whole, and have persisted in the minds of stalwart Armstrongites, and even in the minds of some who have left the organization and still have Herbie owning part of the real estate inside of their skulls.
"Symptom of the times?" you might ask. Yes, partially. But the problem is that the doctrinal approach supported and prolonged those antiquated attitudes and inaccurate stereotypes much longer than they should have existed. You would have thought that "God's True" anything would have spread enlightenment, been part of the solution, ahead of the curve. Oh well. Much of this is moot, because we have political leaders who are actively working to reverse and dismantle the monumental progress in race relations and understanding that our country had made over the past 5 decades. With all the garbage that's come out of the woodwork, I don't know that we'll ever get back to the sweet spot. We've returned to a time and space when daily experience will be teaching some very hard lessons, lessons which had already been learned and properly applied, but are now forgotten, or worse, rejected.
The dissertation which has prompted our comments is educational, and will be embraced by some, possibly following further investigation. I expect that others will react in much the same way as we observe Bob Thiel evaluate solid evidence which counters his Armstrongite beliefs, and the personal embellishments he has added. There will always be people who cannot be educated away from their lifelong mindsets. In Armstrongism, one of the guiding paradigms always was that if what we teach you does not appear to be working, it's because you just are not practicing it vigorously or thoroughly enough! Einstein's definition of insanity notwithstanding!
BB
Smallpox, Measles, Influenza and the Whooping Cough (Pertussis) were not benefits but quite the opposite. But to you, you consider these benefits. Of course they must have also enjoyed the firewater. They did serve in pretty much all the wars though. You mentioned the arrival of the white man. Is it the white man that’s from Spain, or is the white man from Germany, or is it the white man from Italy, or is it the white man from England, or is it the white man from France, or is it the white man from Ireland? Being on reservations now, what choice do they , what does it matter what they vote with their population. Is them voting conservative going to change their situation? They are the Natives Lee, the white man is not native.
I agree BB, Armstrongism offers an unhealthy mindset in how you view “others” if that’s how you view them. That’s why Ghrist had to give the vision to Peter three times before his baptism of the Gentiles. But since armstrongism is so steeped in the old covenant it can’t properly from the heart view “outside tribes” properly because they are/were Ephraim and Manasseh.
Then you include the 13 colonies (13 tribes), the native americans and others are Canaanites pseudo promised land doctrine, well then you have what you have. Just sprinkling Jesus Christ on the outside of the package doesn’t make it apostolic christianity. The apostles weren't on that.
True BB. I've seen that. Mostly extreme provinciality of the magnitutede of "I thought Cambodians are the same as Philipines." and definitely Mexicans and Spanish were not considered "White."
(until of course GTA got fond of the stunning wife of Mexico City Pastor) late sixties. No relation just favoritism.
I'd never seen the word "race" if it hadnt been for the SEP application form. But I figured at the time that a non mixed Dorm would be the racist thing... so I "understood" the question how would they otherwise be able to make "inclusive" Units.
Never knew why the Inuit AC student chased anyone who said Eskimo..... but hey... Europeans are non native speakers...
Nck
To the one at 10:54 AM Sunday —
Benefits include superior technology, like the wheel and Iron Age tools. Benefits such as modern medicine. Benefits, such as bringing an end to the incessant wars and enslavement and cycles of violence. Benefits such as bringing an end to wholesale human sacrifice. Much of what you hear about the diseases is highly exaggerated propaganda.
As for which White men, all of them. Not sure what your point is by enumerating different European identities which have contributed to settling this land. I will say I’m thinking primarily north of the Rio Grande. So I guess he left out Russia in that.
As for who is “native,” everybody’s from somewhere. American Indians supposedly came mostly from Asia. There are evidences early TransAtlantic and TransPacific travels. The term “native” applied to American Indians is discriminatory towards people of other ethnicities who were born here. If you were born here, then you are native. At least the Canadian term “ First Nations” gets closer. “Indigenous“ works a little better. However, since they were not citizens at the beginning, it really would be the White people who are “native (U.S.) Americans“ and “native Canadians.” We chose to extend citizenship to them.
Indians are free to leave the reservations. (That shot was really kind of silly of you.) They often do to make better lives for themselves. As I said, they will serve in the American and Canadian military as loyal citizens. We saw in the recent election, as we have seen before, an overall tendency to reject PC mongering (Including a desire for border security and illegal invaders out– despite often being more ethically connected to those people than to the White settlers of the land). The reservations are intended to allow these nations within our nation – yes, it gets confusing here, just as it got confusing in the liberal’s favorite country, the Soviet Union – to maintain their culture. How much of the difficulty and poverty on the reservations is a result of being operated by the federal government, as conservatives like to say, and how much is a result of their maintenance of that culture, is indeed a subject of debate.
And of course, there is the blunt truth of it. We came, we saw, and we conquered. They conquered each other, and then we conquered them. But the difference is that our conquest put into that cycle and brought things like the aforementioned.
If you want a picture of what at least some native people would be like but for the intervention of the White man, I would suggest North Sentinel Island.
Byker Bob 9:33 wrote, “There was quite a bit of "soft" racism prevalent at Ambassador College while I attended…”
I understand what you mean. AC was not as blatant as the Ku Klux Klan. But the term “soft” does not fit the dynamic. I was on the receiving end of some of the AC racism so I will give you an analysis from experience. The soft racism at AC had an augmented effect on people who were considered racial outsiders. It was augmented by the fact that the WCG and AC held themselves to be God’s church and God’s college doing the will of God. And they were the one and only true church and true college. The non-White people in this milieu were highly vulnerable to this because they also believed this to be profoundly true – that it was God’s church and college.
As the non-Whites saw it, they had been brought to the church and college of God and discovered that God did not like them because the church and the college regarded them as interlopers on a basically “Israelite” zone of privilege. So the soft racism became devastating to these people. When a White AC student made an off-color statement about a Black AC student and laughed about it, to the Black man, it was God laughing at him.
I believe there were people in the WCG ministry and at AC who leveraged their racism on the one true church idea. In that sense they weaponized God. Their assertion was, “If we don’t like God doesn’t like you.” This must be a kind of blasphemy. I also believe that most White exiters from Armstrongism do not realize that this process was going on inside the organization because it was not relevant to them as White people. The exception is that I know the whole Assyrian thing affected some people of German descent adversely in the WCG.
Not so “soft” really. But like I said, I get your point.
Scout
"We chose to extend citizenship to them" they were already native to the land Lee, come on man! And there is no such thing as white man,, or black man, or red people or yellow people. Those are social constructs..
Besides that Lee Walker, there is no blunt truth to what you have to say. They ended up fighting each other once they were forced to the Trail of Tears and had to compete for game, land, and resources. They mixed the tribes together after that, so of course they would have conflict with each other. It's no difference when the western powers put sunni and Shia near each other after WWI or what the British did with India and Pakistan after WWII. There will be conflict. I guess it was the African Americans that made the north conquer the south in the 1860s. Can't we all just get along.
Don't give me any of this white man's inheritance (Good read) crap. We are all God's children, and we all get to share the land. I would suggest "Dances with Wolves" Guess what Lee Walker, love you man!
Any racism is bad, Scout. It hurts people. I'm glad you jumped in with further commentary, referencing your own personal experiences. I'm sure that some of our regular readers believe that there never was racism in what they euphemistically refer to as "God's True Church". My use of the term "soft" was crafted to assist them along on perhaps a baby step or two towards realization and acknowledgment of this evil. Reality is this is one topic where hyperbole is totally justifiable, and appropriate.
Believe me, I learned a lot about racism from my post-WCG dating practices, and marriage. I got righteously pissed about the jokes and statements ignorant people made about those whom I loved. And protective.
BB
8:21 PM Sunday –
Extended citizenship: Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
Fighting each other: When separated from White influence, they returned to such tribalism. Same with the other examples you mentioned.
Yet for some reason, White people are expected to be above such when it comes to sharing space and resources with others. E.G., Europe and foreign “migrants,” USA and illegal aliens. Plus numerous smaller scale examples.
It seems like when it comes to “sharing the land,” it only applies to White people having to share. Wasn’t it Al Sharpton who talked about “White interlopers”? And Liberia, a country literally founded free American blacks, limits citizenship to “Negroes” (that is literally the term used in their 1986 Constitution – Chapter III, Article 27[b]). Everybody else gets to keep what they want. My people are the only ones expected to share.
“Indian Citizenship Act of 1924” you sure this time? Are you sure this isn’t going to be one of those treaties?
“When separated from White influence, they returned to such tribalism.” Is that what the American civil war was about also, such tribalism? Is that what WWI and WWII was about in Europe? I guess that’s what’s going on with the Ukraine Russia tribalism.
“Yet for some reason, White people are expected to be above such when it comes to sharing space and resources with others.” Oh I agree with you here, we shouldn’t give anything to illegals, because if I were to go to another country I couldn’t just get free stuff. They should come in the right way. BUT I think we should punish the people who hire illegals or charge them. Europe is slightly different, because since they wanted to colonize and continue to take the resources from the global south, well then Europe can take their subjects (former subjects) into your lands. See how that works. Your world cup looks a little different now. Sorry for your loss (Argentina). But I agree they need to deal with their migration issue. But they need migrants because of their birth rates issue.
Who in the world listens to Al Sharpton? The man is a joke. But talk about sharing the land. See, Lee Walker you have to think things all the way out like a God does. See the people didn’t “think” into the future, what would happen once the slaves are free, what are we gonna do with them? You brought up Liberia, but see what the powers that be should have done was made the provisions to send the ex slave population after “your tribal war” back to Africa. Give them the needed means like they did the jews coming out of Europe after WWII to “their land.” Because see you can’t deport the blacks and that’s your problem. They’ve served in all your wars, they are baked into the constitution, and they gave you a soundtrack. So you have to “share some of the land” with the natives and the blacks because where else would they go? The natives are from this land, and the blacks were stripped of their total connection to their land centuries ago. Sharing is caring, don’t be stingy.
I made a point that White intervention in the Americas ended the cycle of tribal warfare. You made the point That later, it did resume. I simply made an observation as to why it resumed. I don’t deny you could label the world war as “tribalism.”
As for the rest, you need to be truer to your observations. You recognize problems with illegals, but you still can’t quite accept the need for a little bit of “tribal“ resistance to them. You seem to justify the encroachment on Europe, Even though European involvement in the “global south“ has in fact improved those areas. You don’t see the same levels of cannibalism, and the people have wheels now. In the other hand, in the former Rhodesia and South Africa, you see what happens when the script flips.
Q. “What did they use in Zimbabwe for light before candles?”
A. “Electricity.”
Bless President Trump for accepting Afrikaner refugees.
As for sharing, that’s all we’ve done. Financial aid, education military intervention every time one of those little African… Whatevers goes to hell. And all on top of the benefits colonization brought it. US never had a colony there, but we still have the responsibility of saving Liberia every time it goes… Not sure that word would be allowed here.
Unless they have something we need or want, just let them alone. For the same reason, I donate to animal shelters rather than Soup kitchens: animals need our help, but humans can take care of themselves if they choose to.
Oh, but I must add a full agreement about Liberia and the slaves here. I totally agree with you that we should’ve sent the slaves back there. But we thought it would be cheaper to keep them here. We sure got that one wrong.
I did a little writeup sometime ago about it. Looking at it now, I believe I was probably way too optimistic about the potential, and certainly too conciliatory. But the basic plan remains. We wouldn’t have the problems here if we sent them back over there: https://catsgunsandnationalsecurity.blogspot.com/2024/02/liberia-un-pc-idea-of-what-might-have.html?m=1
But it is never too late. The Constitution can be amended.
The reality is, peoples have conquered and been conquered at least since Genesis 10. That’s just the way it is. It’s even accepted in the Bible (Deut 20).
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I used to watch this show. Took a lot of ribbing at church for it. But this character makes a lot of sense: https://youtu.be/-0fjK0i7Gqc?is=lptVhfZ8VOwopyJ6
Most Indiginous people around the globe had one thing in common. They were tribal people who indulged in communal living. There was tribal loyalty, but no sense of nationalism. They have a longer history than the white man. The white man brought the concepts of private property, taxation, and accumulation of wealth to the conquered, or colonial lands. Some say that these concepts come from ancient Babylon and tend to corrupt the soul.
In the times of the patriarchs of the Bible, it was the ancient empires of the Babylonian model who gave the tribes of Israel all of their existential problems, just as modern day empires have inflicted upon indiginous people.
There seem to be three contemporary models for government systems prevalent today. Communism, in which the government owns or controls everything. Capitalism, in which there is private property and accumulation of wealth, and tribalism, in which people basically live off the land, sharing and conserving. Battles and wars tend to be smaller and on a very localized scale in tribalism. There are good and bad aspects associated with each of these forms. The problems come in where one attempts to conquer and supplant another. Then it becomes a bloody battle to the finish.
White people started communism over in Russia. That has to factor into any discussion the minute we introduce race into our discussions. It is significant that President Trump has such high regard for Vladimir Putin, and covets his nearly boundless authority.
In Spokesman Club long ago, I recall a man standing up and giving a speech, maybe an icebreaker, and proudly proclaiming the courage of his American pioneer ancestors who, among other feats, killed Indians. Nobody that I know of ever proudly proclaimed killing Germans or Japanese during WW2. That would just be profoundly obscene. But at one time Americans were fed on a diet of Hollywood westerns where the only good Indian was a dead Indian.
Historical misrepresentation is something that has plagued Native Americans for centuries and into the modern era. The outcome is that we don’t really know much about Native Americans at the time of the European invasion. The history has been smudged in order to justify the politics of killing and dispossession. I recall an interview with a German Wehrmacht officer I read about someplace concerning the inhumane treatment of Jews. He said that the dehumanization of Jews was a strategy. It is difficult for a human to kill another human, he said. But if the human victim is made to be an animal or villain, it is much easier. So, Jews were dehumanized to make it easier for the average German soldier to kill them. This strategy seemed to be at work in early frontier America with regard to Native Americans.
A popular genre in early America was Indian captivity stories. Google AI states this about these stories, “Modern historians and literary scholars generally regard traditional Indian captivity narratives as a mix of factual history, intense personal bias, and deliberate exaggeration.” And the idea that Native Americans were defending their families and land against invasion seems to have been lost.
The event at Wounded Knee was called a Battle in early historical records. This has been revised to the Massacre of Wounded Knee. This description of the event justifies this, from Google AI: “The U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded a camp of encamped Lakota Ghost Dancers near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. After a shot was fired amid efforts to disarm the group, soldiers opened indiscriminate fire with rifles and artillery, killing 250 to 300 Lakota people—nearly half of whom were women and children fleeing down ravines.” This was a “battle” in which most of the 7th Cavalry casualties resulted from “friendly fire.”
This can be regarded by the right-wing as “woke” history but in the case of Armstrongism the history is very unwoke. It was common, in my experience, for WCG members back last century, to declare that Native Americans should have been exterminated. I heard a local elder proclaim this in a Bible Study back in the mid-west. This is because Native Americans were regarded as Canaanites and all the admonitions of the Torah applied to them. Very right-wing. Hardly woke.
I don’t think we will ever sort this out because the history has become so contaminated by both the right and the left.
Scout
It's just so sad. The decades we've spent with Native Americans as an occasional topic of discussion, and there's always been one person (different individuals, not always the same person) who recites the same old jingoist cliches, assuming that they are new ideas we've never heard before.
Oh well! We do have a president who calls people "Pocahontas". Brings these people out of the woodwork.
8:49 AM Monday – You are aware that the president does that regarding a woman who falsely claims to be Indian, right? A descendant of the real Pocahontas has even said she’s not offended by it.
It is well recorded that the NAZI leaders and ideology framers drew huge inspiration from the American experience. As tbe Americans had genocided the natives to move Wes the NAZis attempted tge same thing to the East. The Manifest destiny as Lebensraum.
And there are many examples of Amerivan influenve on NAZI thought.
As a matter of fact Smericans have killed an extreme number of people for the sake of Democracy.... thst btw never came in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan etc... a million people in Indonesia sanctioned by the CIA to fight Communism.
I'm inspired to watch Apocalypse Now again as soon as it is on. Nearly every scene in Jack Nicolsons Overlook Hotel points to the genocide on tbe Native American. And I am not so childish to coiunt smallpox and other European diseases as deliberate.
Nck
Lee Walker, not only did I refer to the World Wars, but also the American Civil War as tribalism. Don’t forget what happened on this soil. 600k loss because of white on white violence.
Everything happens for a reason, so we will get to Africa which is a continent, not just one country. You talk about wheels, but the wheels were invented in modern day Mesopotamia. But we do know that ancient Egypt had wheels because they did have chariots. But I don’t know what Africans have to do with Native Americans, I guess you refer to them as being native.
I didn’t refer to the US having a colony or practicing colonialism. You are the one who brought up Europe, my friend. So let’s refer to the recent history of Europe. As you know after the Berlin Conference of the mid 1800s, Germany colonized what is known as Namibia, Tanzania, Rwanda. England colonized Kenya, Nigeria, parts of South Africa & parts of Sudan and Zimbabwe. France colonized Niger, Senegal, Cameroon, Chad, Benin and so forth with Belgium, Italy doing the same. So it wasn’t the US. The US did something different like capturing Hawaii (stealing), Guam, Alaska, …….. (perhaps now Greenland)
But after all that “conquering”, in the 1880s & 1890s, thirty years later the Europeans weren’t happy about what they did so they said let’s fight some more WWI, then twenty something odd years later, let’s fight again WWII. Such a violent group of tribes.
You keep talking about these problems but have your glowing reviews of Trump. What someone like myself keeps asking many people like yourself, is since the publican party has the House, the Senate, the White House (your guy), the majority of the SCOTUS, what’s the problem? You have the military and you defeated DEI, even though planes are crashing everywhere, what’s the delay?
Back to your Liberia plan and the US Supreme Court, (not sure if two would vote for your proposal as they are American citizens), and you have the wonderful conservative lady who has adopted some lovely african children who probably wouldn’t vote your way either. So good luck with that. You’r pretty brave to bring that to a church, but see the people who are trying to be christians in a church aren’t focused on conquering other people like you are. You are being conquered right now Lee.
I know America would love to have universal healthcare, free education, low childcare, low housing cost, but we just can’t because we don’t want those……
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