A “Yellowstone” series TV actor posted a clip Tuesday of a Christian pastor preaching on the Wind River Indian Reservation and discouraging some of the Arapaho tribal religious ceremonies, saying “Jesus is everything...A pipe cannot hear your prayers.”
The post exploded, garnering 31,000 views as of Wednesday afternoon and provoking outrage, particularly around the reservation.
Christian Wassana, an enrolled Cheyenne Arapaho of Oklahoma who played Martin Kills Many on “Yellowstone," described Foundations for Nations pastor Sarah Lucas’ message as, “A pastor speaking at a church on the Rez in Wyoming condemning Sundance, one of our oldest and most sacred ceremonies.”
Wassana said, “it feels like history repeating itself, with attempts to erase and discredit our traditional way of life.”
He said everyone has the right to practice his or her own faith, “but claiming that one path is the only path while belittling and condemning ours is deeply disheartening.”
In the Northern Arapaho tribe, the flat pipe is associated with the Creator, and some sun dance rituals center on the pipe and treat it as a sacred object.
‘We Know That Jesus Is Enough’
The full sermon was unavailable at least as of Wednesday. The one-minute, 38-second clip depicts Lucas paraphrasing from the Bible: “tear down the altars, tear down the idols.”
She spoke of “this nation” gathering in recent days, praying. The tribal members had just conducted their sun dance ceremony.
Lucas’ church sits on private, not tribal, land within the reservation, on the east side near Riverton. Two tribes share that reservation: the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone.
“They prayed to pipes and they prayed to the ancestors, believing this is the way for their freedom. To get free from addiction, for people to be healed… This is what this culture did this week,” said Lucas.
She urged the congregation to pray.
“Because we know that Jesus is enough. He’s enough. It’s not Jesus-plus. It’s Jesus everything. He’s everything,” said Lucas.
She referenced people she described as tribal members who have become Christians.
“And they understand the price… when they say that publicly. The persecution that can come with them publicly,” Lucas said. “But they know that this is it. Jesus is the chain breaker. He’s the only one that we should be praying to. A pipe cannot hear your prayers.”
‘This Is Religious Warfare’
The backlash is immense.
Tribal members gathered Tuesday to protest in front of Riverton’s City Hall.
Chris Friday, a protest leader, took to Facebook to call it a victory.
“SARAH LUAS (sic) openly spoke down on OUR sacred Grandpa pipe,” Friday wrote in a lengthy post featuring photographs from the protest. “She don’t know what we as Arapaho have been through, and still go through…. She should educate herself on tribal spirituality before talking on shit she doesn’t know. Because this is religious warfare.”
Friday said the protestors wanted an apology. He called Foundations for Nations leaders “not good people” and told Arapaho tribal members to boycott the church.
“Don’t go to their food bank. Don’t go to their events. Don’t let your children go,” he wrote. “We want them out of Arapaho land forever. They no longer are welcome here.”
Friday told Cowboy State Daily in a later interview that the "Grandpa pipe is our spiritual leader” and “our connection with the Creator.”
Friday added, "They can leave, you know. They’re not welcome here anymore."
Absolute Truth
Desiree Henderson, a woman who described herself as a four-year member of the church’s ministry, posted a nearly 17-minute video in the church’s defense.
She said she’d never serve under a ministry that manipulates people or manipulates the gospel.
“But what most people don’t get to see when they’re not part of the inner workings of a ministry is the unbelievable sacrifices that are made. The unbelievable generosity and giving of their own time and resources that people give,” said Henderson.
She said she knows the character of Sarah Lucas and her husband Jason, “and their heart to give” as well as the criticism and gossip they endure.
Henderson said she understands “the upset” and would align with it if she “didn’t know the Lord.”
“But I do know the Lord,” said Henderson.
She described a dichotomy between the philosophy “of the world,” that truth is relative, and the belief that absolute truth exists.
“In the natural world, gravity is an absolute truth,” she said. “And if you defy gravity, you’re going to experience the consequences of it.”
Henderson said there are absolute, spiritual truths that exist “whether you believe it or not,” and that the Bible is the metric for finding that truth. She also encouraged people to question and study the Christian faith rather than adopt it blindly.
Numerous Facebook users posted negative comments under a share of Henderson’s video, such as,
- “Bannish (sic) her off the Rez,”
- “Shut up you ignorant clueless piece of shit”
- “bullshit Eurocentric nonsense oppressors crying victimhood,”
- “This is shitting on Native culture, you should be sad,” and
- “Get her out.”
Didn’t Hide The Ball
Foundations for Nations was overt about its beliefs and goals before the Sundance message went viral.
Its website calls it a multi-cultural, multi-generational church seeking for people to “have a relationship with God, be ignited to reach people with the good news about Jesus, and work together to impact communities.”
Its statement of belief says that Jesus is “the only way to heaven and the only name that can be called upon to gain eternal life.”
The church incorporated in Wyoming and settled on the reservation in 2017.
Lucas declined to comment Wednesday to Cowboy State Daily.
In a 2018 interview for a news feature, Lucas told local news outlet The Ranger that she and her family were building a massive play and recreation in the area of Arapahoe (town, not tribe). She said they would gear their ministry toward children who were having hardships at home.
“We inspire hope and change; we tell them their worth and their value” and teach them Biblical principles along the way, said Lucas at the time.
That summer the Lucases and visiting volunteers hosted a six-week summer program to offer kids what Lucas described as both fun and guidance.
Before launching the church, the Lucases planned it for six years. She said the goal was to help “families that are so broken that they don’t have any hope,” and to “share Jesus with them.”
Figured It Would Blow Up
Wassana told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday interview that he figured his post would blow up. He said he’s part Arapaho and though he descends from the southern, rather than the northern band based in Wyoming, he has family members in the north and considers the bands “one tribe.”
Wassana referenced tribal members’ darker history with past, Christian-affiliated missions, such as the boarding schools that forbade the children from speaking their native languages.
He said Lucas’ message equated to a tribal member walking into a Christian church and maligning the cross.
Lucas had, however, preached her message in a private Christian church, on private land. People attend the church voluntarily.
Wassana acknowledged the distinction, but said the affront stems from the church opening its doors to children, in particular.
“Whenever you have somebody who’s a trusted adult, religious leader in the community saying these things, going against our ceremonies, saying they’re wrong, it can create a lot of confusion fear and shame for our children,” said Wassana. “We don’t want our young people growing up feeling like they have to choose between being accepted or embracing who they are because a leader they see is teaching those kinds of things.”
Boarding Schools
Indian boarding schools proliferated in the nation a century ago, many run by religious groups and funded with federal money.
Historical accounts tell of tribal leaders who wanted their kids to gain an education, a federal government that wanted to assimilate the kids and religious leaders who wanted to convert them.
Northern Arapaho sub-chief Sharp Nose sent his son, Little Chief, to the Carlisle boarding school in Pennsylvania in the late 1800s, hoping the boy could learn skills from the white man for surviving in the new culture.
Little Chief died in the school’s infirmary in 1883 and was buried on school grounds – a common occurrence for tribal children.
Jesuits came to the Wind River Indian Reservation and built St. Stephen’s Indian School in 1884.
Henderson countered claims and fears of modern-day assimilation in her video. She spoke with admiration of an East Indian (not American Indian) convert named Sundar Singh, who embraced the culture, clothing, and customs of India while preaching about Jesus, even dressing as a Hindu spiritual leader.
Two Religions
The Christian and Arapaho faith traditions differ from one another.
John G. Carter, researcher for the Smithsonian Institution, penned a Nov. 23, 1936, letter to M.W. Stirling, Chief of the Bureau of American Ethnology, describing “the first eye witness description of the Flat Pipe by a white man, and the first eye witness account of a ceremony held in honor of this Pipe.”
In the Arapaho creation story, wrote Carter in the treatise that followed, a global flood covered the earth, and a man walked on the water clutching a pipe. He fasted and wept. He sent animals into the water to bring land from the sea bottom to make the earth, and the turtle succeeded in that task, the account says.
“And with this the man, or the grandfather makes the land” and eventually the Arapaho people, wrote Carter.
“The myth implies that either the world was made at the Flat Pipe’s request, or because of the Flat Pipe, and in order to provide a place on which the Flat Pipe could rest,” Carter added. He said the Arapaho view the flat pipe as an “exceedingly holy object” held in the highest possible veneration and respect.
The Christian tradition also involves a global flood.
But first, Genesis tells that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth – and ultimately a man and a woman.
The man and woman sinned by disobeying God, but God promised to send a savior. Thousands of years later, the savior came as Jesus, who is God incarnate and who, as the son counterpart to God the Father, was also involved in creation, according to the biblical book of John.
And Jesus allowed the bloodthirsty and jealous authority figures of his day to torture him to death. He then rose from the dead, redeeming those who believe in him with his own sacrifice, and he urged his followers to tell others about him, the New Testament says.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
