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| Kaitlin Curtice |
Kaitlin Curtice is a Native American Christian author and speaker. As an enrolled member of the Potawatomi Citizen Band and someone who has grown up in the Christian faith, Kaitlin writes on the intersection of Indigenous spirituality, faith in everyday life, and the church.
Her new book NATIVE (available May 2020) is about identity, soul-searching, and being on the never-ending journey of finding ourselves and finding God. As both a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation and a Christian, Kaitlin Curtice offers a unique perspective on these topics. In this book, she shows how reconnecting with her identity both informs and challenges her faith. Her first book, Glory Happening: Finding the Divine in Everyday Places, was published with Paraclete Press in 2017. It is a series of fifty essays and prayers focusing on finding the sacred in everyday life.
Kaitlin has contributed to OnBeing, Religion News Service, USA Today and Sojourners, among others, and she was interviewed for the New Yorker on colonization within Christian missions. In 2018 she was featured in a documentary with CBS called “Race, Religion and Resistance,” speaking on the dangers of colonized Christianity.
Towards the beginning of NATIVE, you write: "We have to remember that physical places are spiritual places. We cannot disconnect the physical from the spiritual, because the spiritual is all around us." What happens when we forget this principle?
We have lived for a long time, disconnecting our physical and spiritual places. I think that has happened largely in the white American church in the way that we live so disembodied from our relationship with creation and with the land. If we cannot understand that the land we live on has a spirit and a life to it, we will actually end up denying care to our own spirits— it’s all connected.
You quote Lisa Dougan, "Lasting change comes most assuredly when the oppressed are central agents in addressing the problems they face." Why is this so important?
People who are working on behalf of an oppressed group often use the line, “I want to give a voice to the voiceless.” The reality is, no one is voiceless. The problem is, their voices aren’t being heard, and it is the responsibility of those with privilege to make sure we are listening. So, as Lisa says, lasting change has to come when the oppressed are the ones who make their own decisions, and their voices are heard by others.
You make the point that "in Western thought, fear and a mentality of scarcity distort our reality. This makes everything an enemy, instead of reminding us that all creatures of the earth, all parts of creation, have roles and abilities that can be manifested to hurt or to heal." How do you see this playing out during a time like Covid-19?
During Covid-19 we are seeing the scarcity problem front and center. People are literally scanning the aisles of the stores for more toilet paper and hoarding hand sanitizer. We’ve seen people act in selfish ways and we’ve seen people really show up for one another. We can all hold the responsibility to hurt one another and this earth further during this time, or we can work toward healing. I believe we work toward healing when we listen to those on the margins. We heal when we practice collective ways of being.
Further along in NATIVE, you write that "my faith is not a faith to be held over others or a faith that forces others into submission, but an inclusive, universal faith, constantly asking what the gift of Mystery truly is and how we can better care for the earth we live on who constantly teaches us what it means to be humble. I'm wondering what is your definition of humility? And why is humility so important?
Right now in my life, humility is about not being afraid to recognize our smallness in the scale of the universe. So I can go outside and hold respect with the trees, I can feel humble in their presence, I can let them remind me of my smallness. That means I live in relationship with them and I don’t just hold power over them. It changes the way we embody love and belonging in the world.
You mention your experience growing up, attending a mainline Christian church. "The problem with the white evangelical church is that assimilation is subtle; when you walk through that sanctuary door, the assumption is that you participate, you oblige, and you don't cause a fuss." Can you go a bit deeper with the eventual results of assimilation?
Assimilation tricks us into believing what we are told to believe. I have talked to so many Black, Indigenous, people of color who have lived the lives that whiteness has told them to live— to be quiet and to smile and get along with everyone. When we claim those parts of ourselves that have always been there, that belong to us, we challenge whiteness, and we challenge assimilation. It’s not an easy place to be. But it’s totally worth it.
I love what you have to say about prayer! "Prayer is a layered, complicated
thing, and when we approach it that way, we enter into the mystery of what it is, of what it means to gather in community to choose sacredness around us. Duality or living in a way that constantly propels us toward one extreme or another divides us by binary thinking and it steals our ability to enter into sacredness, making us into people who pray to get a reward, who pray because we are afraid we will be punished if we don't." Could you offer your own definition of prayer? And perhaps give an example of how you use prayer in your own life?
Right now to me, prayer is breath. Prayer is sobbing in grief when there is nothing else left to feel. Prayer is the full human experience of our anger and our joy, the fullness of what makes us who we are. We can pray and not fully understand who God is, and that’s the most amazing thing of all. We can get quiet and understand that we don’t understand, and that’s okay.
You write: "The problem isn't that we search for the truth; the problem is that we become obsessed with our belief that we hold the truth, and we destroy entire cultures in the process." Is this obsession bound up in religion or culture or being human (and being fearful) or is it a mixture of all three?
The problem and danger of power is that when we become powerful we can use that power to oppress others. Maybe that’s always been human nature. Some people aren’t religious and don’t believe in any sort of god or higher power, and they are still capable of deep love and deep hate. I think we take our power and we combine it with things like religion to make a toxic problem, and we’ve seen that happen over and over again. Sometimes we combine power with culture. Sometimes we combine power with social status. It can be dangerous no matter what, but there is a certain horror in using religion to destroy others, and within Christianity, we have to continue to talk about it.
It seems as if, ultimately, you're pointing to nature and creation as well as the Creator as being an important part of this process. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about that, especially in light of global warming and Covid-19?
I think in life after Covid-19, we need to ask how we will treat the earth. We need to ask who we are supposed to be as humans here, and we need to take more seriously our role in paying attention to our relationship with all creatures around us. I hope we will.
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