Tribe Tells Christian Church To Leave Reservation; Church Says No
Northern Arapaho Tribal leaders told a Christian pastor who said "a pipe cannot hear your prayers" to leave their reservation. The pastor said she's staying, and won't apologize for preaching from the Bible.
The Northern Arapaho Tribe’s executive branch has asked a Christian church to leave the reservation, the tribe’s chair said Friday.
In response, Foundations for Nations pastor Sarah Lucas told Cowboy State Daily she and her family aren’t planning to leave yet. They’re looking to legal solutions to stay – and hoping for a “revival” in the meantime, Lucas said.
The church, which has operated in Fremont County for nine years, sits within the borders of the Wind River Indian Reservation, but it’s on a parcel of private, not tribal, land.
The controversy erupted eight days ago when Lucas discouraged some tribal faith practices during a church service, just as the tribe finished its Sundance ceremonies. She had said, “a pipe cannot hear your prayers,” and “we know that Jesus is enough.”
The message sparked immense backlash. Northern Arapaho Tribal members were furious at what they cast as an insult to their “grandfather pipe” – a revered relic associated with the Arapaho creation story.
Protests unfolded at the Riverton City Hall and at the Foundations for Nations church site in the town of Arapahoe.
“I want a public apology from them,” said Northern Arapaho Business Council Chair Keenan Groesbeck during a protest at the church last Tuesday. He stood in front of a yellow tape line that stretched across the church’s driveway.
He said Lucas’ message was disrespectful.
“If they don’t want to apologize to us, they can leave,” said Groesbeck.
Protestors joined in a traditional chant as honks and whoops sounded from passing vehicles.
Lucas went to a meeting with tribal leaders Friday. She said the council allowed its “Four Old Men” elder group to join the meeting, and leaders discussed the importance of the pipe relic and told her to leave.
Lucas described the meeting as unprofessional.
Groesbeck took to Facebook about two hours later.
“Just so everyone knows. We told Foundations For Nations and Sarah Lucas they got to go. We ain’t putting up with their bullshit,” says Groesbeck’s Friday post. “Hohou go enjoy our powwow.”
Groesbeck could not be reached for comment by publication. Nor could the other council members except for Sami Dresser, who declined to comment.
The tribe’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment by publication.
Lucas told Cowboy State Daily she won’t apologize for preaching from the Bible, though she wishes to apologize “that it came off as an attack.”
“But I am a Christian preacher. I am a pastor and I preach the full counsel of God’s word,” she said.
Lucas said she’s not against the sun dance altogether: she supports fasting and praying as a whole concept. But she understands the ceremony also involves “the worship of the pipe,” she said, adding that’s idolatry, and irreconcilable with the teaching that “Jesus is the only way.”
She pointed to the divisive messages the Bible attributes to Jesus, and the persecution and martyrdom his followers suffered.
“You could take everything from me but you can’t take my God,” said Lucas. “I’m willing to be martyred for the faith. I’ve counted the cost.”
She voiced mild surprise at the current outrage, saying community members have maligned Jesus and biblical teaching to her for years and she hasn’t retaliated.
Regarding the tribal community, Lucas said she loves them and wants to maintain a forgiving posture. She referenced the high suicide, poverty, and addiction rates of the reservation. And she reiterated part of the same message that sparked this clash.
“Only Jesus can turn a life around, can deliver somebody, can set somebody free,” she said, adding that she’s called to preach that and is “more concerned with eternity, than I am about earthly hate.”
Lucas said people have been “twisting” her family’s message, casting their work as a grift and slandering them. She countered, noting that she did not take a salary for the church’s first several years, and that she’s now at about $25,000 annually. Her husband has worked two jobs in the past to pay their bills, she said.
She rebutted other rumors about harms to kids in the church’s sizable kids’ program, saying “All these lies are making the kids in our program feel unsafe. And that just hurts.”
Lucas indicated her family isn’t ready to leave the reservation. She said she wants to see people’s hearts changed.
“They might be mad for now, but I believe the supernatural power of God is going to turn this around,” said Lucas. “We don’t obey man. We obey God.”
She said she and her family are working with an attorney to remain on their parcel. They’re also weathering death threats, according to multiple screenshots Lucas sent Cowboy State Daily.
The outlet reached out to the FBI late Monday and will update this story when the agency comments.
Special church events are suspended for now, but church is scheduled for each Sunday as usual, Lucas said, adding that some kids still want to come to youth group, and some parents have been asking when the church will start youth group again.
The church runs a philanthropic food pantry, which closed early last week.
‘Why Are They Trying To Save Us?’
Chris Friday, a tribal member who has helped to coordinate multiple protests, told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that the question of whether the Lucases and church must leave the reservation “Now (is) probably going to involve the courts.”
Friday helped organize another protest outside the church during its Sunday service, which occurred on schedule. He said church attendees were seen “carrying around guns.”
Lucas confirmed this in her own interview, as she referenced the death threats.
“There’s people protesting there all the time,” said Friday, regarding the church. “Just, what they said, man. It hurts us as Arapaho people. Makes us seem like we’re lower than them, that their way is better than ours.”
Friday defended the Arapaho prayer traditions, saying they go back generations, and non-tribal members have often tried to observe them without permission.
“Why are they interested in us so much? Why are they trying to save us? I don’t know. We don’t need any saving or anything; we didn’t ask for them,” said Friday. “They should just take the hint and leave – respectfully of course. Go back to where you were.”
A Little Law
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which Arapaho and other tribal leaders signed along with the U.S. government, says any “bad men among the whites” or other people who “commit any wrong upon the person or property of the Indians” shall be, “upon proof” handed to the federal government for arrest and punishment according to the nation’s laws. The offender shall “also reimburse the injured persons for the loss sustained,” the treaty says.
Friday referenced the clause as a potential avenue for barring the Lucases from the reservation.
It’s uncertain whether the tribe would win such a case.
Some tribes invoked it against the federal government in litigation regarding pharmaceutical companies’ marketing and sale of opioid drugs to tribal members. That claim failed because the tribes “(failed) to allege a ‘wrong’ cognizable under the treaty,” says a Dec. 9, 2020, order of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and the opioid company hadn’t come onto the reservation to commit some wrong.
Friday noted in his interview that tribal land surrounds the Foundations for Nations private land parcel. He wondered aloud if the tribe could block the Lucases’ access, but said “I don’t know how that would really work. It would probably have to go through the court.”
More From That Church Service
Lucas’ full sermon was unavailable at least as of Monday. The one-minute, 38-second clip that went viral last week 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.
“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.”
Because Of This Dark History
Christian Wassana, an enrolled Cheyenne Arapaho of Oklahoma who played Martin Kills Many on “Yellowstone," told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday interview that tribal members are still wrestling with troubling treatments by past, Christian-affiliated missions, such as the boarding schools that forbade the children from speaking their native languages.
He had posted one of the original links to the video of Lucas preaching.
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.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
