Yakama youth heal by reconciling faith and culture

 

Dancing Our Prayers (DOP) is a team of Native students from the Yakama Nation who travel locally, regionally and nationally to share "spirituality and ways of life as followers of the Jesus Way," said Dewy Bill, director.

Dancing Our Prayers is about reconciliation and healing between Christians and Native Americans.

It is a program of Mending Wings, a nonprofit leadership development, and cultural and spiritual revitalization program, started in 2006 to help Yakama youth "fly again."

As students drum, dance and share testimonies, they engage in conciliation, justice and healing between Christians and Native Americans. Forming relationships with church members is part of their goal.

Dewy, 21, became involved with Mending Wings in the seventh grade and with Dancing Our Prayers in eighth grade.

Growing up in the Indian Shaker Church, he responded at the age of 14 to an altar call to surrender his life to Jesus. Ordained at 17 as a traveling missionary, he often opens and closes Wednesday Mending Wings services with prayer and song.

Although called "Indian Shaker Church," it did not integrate Indigenous ways, dancing or clapping. It has a mix of theologies and ways of worship that include Catholic, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Gospel and Baptist church traditions.

"At Mending Wings, I learned that to dance is to pray," said Dewy, who graduated from the Yakama Nation Tribal School in 2021, spent a year internship with Mending Wings and was hired in September 2023 as director of the Dancing Our Prayers program. He is one of 12 on the Mending Wings staff—three full-time, one part-time and eight volunteers.

Through Mending Wings, he found a sense of who he is and gained self-worth that keeps him from following in the footsteps of his parents and many of his 12 siblings, who struggle with drug and alcohol addiction.

He said part of the struggle for many youth is thinking they need to choose between their culture and faith.

"It's okay to be who God made us to be and to honor God. It's also okay to be a culture bearer," said Dewy, who takes Dancing Our Prayers groups of 15 to 20 students to visit congregations in the region two weekends a month from October to May.

Every other year, they go on a two-week trip, like an August visit to a Presbyterian church in Orlando, Fla., and performing at Universal Studios. Two years ago, they met members of the Lumbee Tribe and local congregations in Charlotte, N.C. He learned that the Lumbee, who do not have a treaty, lack land, hunting and fishing rights and more, making him realize the importance of cultural transmission.

"We are culture bearers to the next generation of Native and non-native people who do not know the Yakama Nation," he said. "We help Native students find themselves here and across the nation."

In ninth grade, Dewy shifted from dancing to drumming and singing English songs that glorify Christ. Many songs for DOP are written by Jonathan Maracle, a Mohawk from Canada and friend of Corey Greaves, director of Mending Wings.

"Some sing faith songs to drumbeats. Songs praise God and speak of forgiveness, gratitude and the river of life," Dewy said. "One song tells of the beauty of life as we join hands in a circle and do a friendship dance to glorify the Creator."

The words express values and virtues of Christian faith and Yakama culture.

"As Native people, one way to worship is to dance, because, as one elder wrote in a poem, our grandmothers and grandfathers danced. Dance lives in our hearts and our blood. We dance for babies, elders, those who have left this world, whole tribes and facing hardships we experienced from the government and church. We dance to pray and to heal," Dewy said.

"We pray by dancing before the Lord, like King David in the Scriptures did," he said. "While the songs use words, through dancing and moving, I can express what I can't express in words."

From 35 to 70 students from Wapato, Toppenish, White Swan, Granger, Selah and Yakima come Wednesdays to a church building in Wapato.

At 4 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 2, a team will visit Covenant United Methodist Church in Spokane. It will join the Sunday, Nov. 3, worship at Community United Methodist in Coeur d'Alene.

"We visit many denominations—United Methodist, Lutherans, Covenant, Presbyterians and nondenominational—and ecumenical gatherings," Dewy said.

Mending Wings is a relational ministry, not one of coming and leaving. It goes to churches to build ongoing relationships and connections.

Teams build relationships and friendships on weekend visits, because students stay with families. Taking time to talk one-to-one, they form relationships that extend beyond the weekend, giving students extended family ties throughout the Pacific Northwest and the U.S., he said.

In May 2024, the group visited Pioneer United Methodist Church, in Walla Walla. Before going there, they learned that the Rev. James "Father" Wilbur, a Methodist missionary and pastor of the church in the 1880s, also worked from 1864 to 1892 as an Indian agent and ran the Fort Simcoe Boarding School on the Yakama Reservation. (An online report said he twice complained to President Lincoln about treatment of tribal members by Indian agents.)

"There was healing, recognizing that we came full circle in going there. It took us closer into the conciliation piece," Dewy said, noting that some students felt awkward at first.

"We met with the pastor and found the church in a moment of reflection on their past with the Yakama people," he said. "Being there in person was important for an 'aha moment' of peace and unity as we came together. They pledged not to repeat the past. We all pledged to move forward as a church and God's people."

"As the service progressed with student testimonies and dance, and with acknowledging our common history, we felt welcome," he added.

Dewy said Fort Simcoe Boarding School still impacts the tribe through generational trauma from the hurts great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers experienced. Few speak the Yakama language, a legacy of the fear of punishment boarding schools instilled in Native students for speaking their language.

Hurt and fear that passed from great-grandmothers to grandmothers to mothers discouraged them from learning to speak the Yakama language so they could not pass it on, Dewy clarified.

"My grandmother was fluent but doesn't remember words," he said. "Boarding schools broke the Indian spirit and Indian heart."

Dewy knows only a few conversational sentences in Yakama.

Now, however, all reservation schools teach classes in Yakama every day. Elders teach teachers and others in the community Thursday evenings.

Preserving Native language is integral to maintaining tribal culture and identity, Dewy said.

"My faith in Christ is also important. I follow Christ and go to church through ups and downs in life, because I know someone deeply loves me," he said.

Saddened by the addiction of family members, he said, "I am empowered spending my life worshiping the wonderful powerful Creator who made me. I have a sense of purpose. I seek to be a role model for youth."

Addiction, as part of the intergenerational trauma, breaks ties to Yakama cultural traditions, knowledge and language, he said.

Dewy wants to help others break that cycle both by turning to "Someone Higher"—Christ—and reconnecting with traditional Yakama cultural values.

"Christian and Native virtues and values coincide. Both value relationships, respect community and learning from each other," Dewy said. "Sharing our ways as churches and Native organizations builds people up.

"I love the church and what it stands for, and I love my people, so I work to bring the two together to tear down walls colonization built and to build bridges of peace and healing," he added. "The values also coincide in calling us to take responsibility, take care of ourselves and be in community."

For information, email dewymendingwings@gmail.com.