the Iconocast: Waziyatawin, part 2 (episode 4)

In this episode, we (Sarah Lynne Anderson and Mark Van Steenwyk) continue our interview Dakota scholar Waziyatawin. Be sure to check outpart one. In this part of the interview, we continue to grapple with how Christianity needs to come to terms with its imperial history. We need to repent with more than just words. Our ecclesial bodies (especially denominations with land holdings) may want to ask themselves “what does justice look like?”

We know that, until this podcast, most of you have never heard of Waziyatawin…but this interview raises more questions (in a starkly eloquent way) than any interview with a high-profile Christian provocateur. Please take the time to listen–we promise that it will mess with your head in amazing ways.

You might be interested in a series that has developed as a response to the challenges Waz issues to Christians in the interview: Christianity is Empire. That series will engage the imperial nature of historic Christianity and seek, we hope, to offer a chastened, faithful, alternative.

Waziyatawin is a Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota.

Waz currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria (British Columbia). Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities.

She is the author or editor of: Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives, Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities, For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook,In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century, and What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland.

---