I have come to the conclusion that the future hope of the world lies in the combination of the moral guidance of real Christianity – that is, the way of life that Jesus actually taught – with traditional indigenous wisdom about how to live in harmony with a specific place and with all of its living beings. An indigenous elder who is also Christian is a powerful force for positive change. He or she is the kind of leader we desperately need to help change our way of living on the earth in order to try to survive the global ecological crisis we are now facing.
In truth, Jesus was a dark-skinned indigenous man, born into the tribe of Judah. So indigenous people should be able to relate more easily to the real Jesus and his cultural context than Europeans. However, most native people have rejected Christianity because “Christian” Europeans and their missionaries demonstrated through their attitudes and actions the exact opposite of what following Jesus really means.
It seems ironic, but from what I can tell people in many traditional indigenous societies lived (and still live) more like the early Christians than did most Europeans or Euro Americans who were trying to convert them. Like the good Samaritan, native people were from another religious tradition but their actions may have been much more pleasing to God than the actions of those who claimed to worship him and to know him through their Bibles. The proselytizers should have learned from the “uncivilized” people in front of them about how to be more faithful to their professed religion.