A United Methodist Insight Special
It can be sobering to learn that so much of America’s gain comes from loss.
About 60 students, faculty and guests of historic Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., learned this month about centuries of United States policies and actions that deprived countless Native Americans of their land, their liberty and their lives.
The Committee on Native American Ministries (CONAM) of the United Methodist Church’s Eastern Pennsylvania Annual Conference has presented the "Loss of Turtle Island" (LOTI), an interactive, educational experience, to churches and groups in about a dozen settings since 2017. It addresses the history of exploitation, violence and oppression suffered by Indigenous Americans at the hands of the federal government and other forces.
The participatory exercise also explores the role of Christian denominations’ in perpetuating the now repudiated Doctrine of Discovery. That 15th-century Catholic papal declaration gave predominantly Christian nations religious authority to invade and colonize non-Christian lands. It eventually became the basis of international law regarding Indigenous land sovereignty in the U.S. and elsewhere. The United Methodist Church denounced it in 2012 and again in 2016.
One of the nation’s oldest colleges, Franklin and Marshall (F&M) was named after two of America’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin and John Marshall. The institution had good reason to invite CONAM to its campus Nov. 7 to teach about the Doctrine of Discovery. John Marshall, as the U.S. Supreme Court’s fourth and longest-serving chief justice, used it to limit the land sovereignty of Indigenous peoples in the 1823 landmark case Johnson vs McIntosh.
However, the college is deeply engaged in a much larger, three-year education and reconciliation endeavor. It’s called the Reckoning with Lancaster Humanities Project, funded by a $1.4 million grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation. F&M designed the project to “explore and address the complex history of Lancaster and the College's role in that history.” And that design includes collaboration with community partners extending beyond the campus.
To study the cultural anthropology of central Pennsylvania during this 2024–25 academic year, the project looks at the lives and encounters of Indigenous tribes facing the encroachment of “settler colonialism,” which began over two centuries ago. It is already bearing fruit in knowledge that is emerging from faculty and student research, a reoriented course curriculum and experiences like the CONAM presentation.
The next academic year, in 2025-26, will focus on how historical slavery and abolitionist efforts in that region can inform today’s challenges with mass incarceration and migrant detention. And in 2026-27 the college and its community will explore together the timely subject of “Refugees, Migrants and the Question of Welcome.”
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One of many Loss of Turtle Island presentation scrolls read by participants. (Photo by John W. Coleman)
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Eric Hirsch, a faculty coordinator of Franklin and Marshall College’s Reckoning with Lancaster Humanities Project, reads from one of the Loss of Turtle Island scrolls. (Photo by John W. Coleman)
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CONAM member Terri Leone reads the script for the Loss of Turtle Island presentation. (Photo by John W. Coleman)
Seeking ‘historical reconciliation, meaningful change’
The project’s overall goal is to help lead to “historical reconciliation” and “meaningful change” at F&M and across its diverse city. To do so, it intends to “authentically tell the stories of Lancaster's diverse communities; forge community partnerships of learning and creation; and incorporate urgent topics into the College curriculum.”
Faculty coordinator Mary Ann Levine. (Photo by John W. Coleman)
“There is a tremendous appetite for this unprecedented work among F&M and the wider community; and the participation has been wonderful,” said Mary Ann Levine, PhD, Anthropology Department chair and one of two Faculty Fellows coordinating the project’s first year. “Indigenous people have been erased from Lancaster in many ways. But we’re trying to forge new partnerships of learning and creation, while shaping a future together. This special presentation by CONAM plays a big role in that effort.”
The Loss of Turtle Island, its name derived from one of many Indigenous stories of the earth’s creation, was created by a Canadian social justice group and adapted as a teaching resource by the Mennonite Church USA in 2016. Eastern Pennsylvania Conference CONAM borrowed it from the Mennonites and “Methodized” it to emphasize the Methodist Church’s historic complicity and participation in Indigenous people’s exploitation and loss. F&M is the third local college to welcome CONAM’s presentation since December 2023.
A group of CONAM members shared in words and slide images a largely unknown history of Indigenous peoples’ suffering and survival that revealed dark, disturbing truths. It was a story of capitulation and compromise, of forced removal but also fierce resilience. The script honored those who were here first but became last, who were pushed off their fertile lands and onto barren reservations, pushed out of history books and media, except to appear as villains and caricatures, and finally pushed into the dim margins of America's conscience — out of sight, out of mind.
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Loss of Turtle Island
Students stand unshod on blankets representing the lands and rights lost by Native Americans through European colonization and abrogated U.S. treaties in the interactive educational experience, "Loss of Turtle Island." (Photo by John W. Coleman)
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CONAM member Terri Leone reads the Loss of Turtle Island script as participants stand shoeless on blankets that represent Indigenous peoples’ lands and rights. (Photo by John W. Coleman)
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Jess McPherson, of the Circle Legacy Center, comments on the collaborative Reckoning with Lancaster project, as faculty coordinator Mary Ann Levine listens. (Photo by John W. Coleman)
The nearly three-hour program’s racially diverse, intergenerational audience came from the campus and its community. Most listened silently, but some volunteers read brief information aloud from scrolls they were given. Many stood without shoes on a large, colorful patchwork of blankets assembled on the floor throughout the meeting room to represent Turtle Island.
However, at critical points in the narration, blankets were abruptly taken away from beneath their feet one by one, to symbolize the gradual removal of Indigenous populations, along with their lands and freedoms. The narrators recounted efforts to exterminate those populations through violent attacks, broken treaties, forced removal and forced assimilation.
Participants appeared at first puzzled but then numbed by the gradual disappearance of blankets. Yet, only after the 75-minute presentation would they be able to share reactions and reflections, as they formed groups to discuss what they witnessed and felt.
Arranged in in four large “talking circles,” attendees spoke of the experience’s impact on them and its relevance to their own lives. They took turns to speak, as each group passed around a “talking stick,” part of a cultural tradition that shows respect and a desire to listen to each other’s views.
Painful narrative is ‘overwhelming but necessary’
Many students voiced surprise, even amazement at the new knowledge they received about the brutal history of colonization. Several described it as “overwhelming but necessary.”
“This was a powerful telling of hundreds of years of painful history,” said Haley Cushion, a senior Anthropology and Public Health major. She acknowledged feeling “a little anxious” during the blanket removals. “There is so much I didn’t know. But it’s a privilege to be able to learn it now, including from people who were kind enough to share their own personal stories.”
Misty Rose Nace (Solorio), a member of the Ojibway and Anishinabe tribes in Canada, and her son Nathan Solorio, 16, shared their stories and answered questions in talking circles. Both were invited to participate by CONAM.
Nace spoke of recovering from the trauma of being taken as an infant from her Indigenous family in Manitoba, Canada, in the 1960s. She was one of thousands of “scoop babies” given for money by Canada’s foster care welfare system to non-Indigenous U.S. and Canadian families. Nathan spoke about participating, with CONAM’s help, in the 2024 Youth Summit of the National Congress of American Indians, and then becoming a leader in the Native youth organization UNITY.
“It was interesting for students to ask questions of him,” said Verna Colliver, CONAM secretary. “Having a young, upcoming Native American leader take an active part in an event like this on a college campus points to a positive future for Native Americans among us.”
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Emerson Sampaio reads from one of the Loss of Turtle Island scrolls. (Photo by John W. Coleman)
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Nathan Solorio (center) takes the talking stick to talk about his emergence as a leader this year in the National Congress of American Indians Youth Summit, thanks to CONAM’s help. (Photo by John W. Coleman)
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Misty Rose Nace Solorio (right) tells Loss of Turtle Island participants in a talking circle her story of overcoming trauma from being taken as an infant from her Indigenous family in Canada. (Photo by John W. Coleman)
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CONAM co-chair Sandi Cianciulli (left), who is Oglala-Lakota, shares her childhood experiences with Loss of Turtle Island participants in a talking circle. The red dresses in the background are hung at every CONAM event to remember Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis awareness movement. (Photo by John W. Coleman)
“This is not my story, but I see myself in it,” Emerson Sampaio said in one of the talking circles. Born in Angola, Southern Africa, and raised in New York, he now sells Angolan food at a store and restaurant he owns in Lancaster. He noted Doctrine of Discovery parallels between America’s colonialism and African nations that were exploited and oppressed by Europeans for centuries. “It’s good of F&M to share this important history and experience with our community.”
Sampaio also commended President Joe Biden’s October 25 apology for the federal government's role in running Native American industrial boarding schools.
“There should be more of those kinds of reconciliation efforts with Native Americans by our leaders,” he said.
Thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly sent to such schools to unlearn their own tribal cultures and languages and be indoctrinated into the ways of American culture. The first, off-reservation school run by the federal government was housed at a U.S. Army barracks in Carlisle, Pa., from 1879 to 1918. It was a model for many others. Today it is the U.S. Army’s War College; but there are still Native children’s graves and some Carlisle memorabilia there. In addition, F&M College student researchers found that over 120 Carlisle School children spent summers working for white families in Lancaster County.
CONAM’s mission: to raise awareness
The Eastern Pennsylvania Conference CONAM has cosponsored bus trips to Carlisle, in addition to speaking in churches, offering workshops and presentations, and promoting land acknowledgement ceremonies and other means of honoring Indigenous history and culture. They also support Native American leaders, churches and communities in and beyond their region. Supported by the churchwide Native American Ministries Sunday special offering, CONAM’s mission is to “raise awareness of the history, traditions and contributions of Native Americans in our churches and communities.”
CONAM and F&M each work closely with the Circle Legacy Center in Lancaster. The center partners with religious, educational, artistic and business entities to present cultural programs focused on “supporting and empowering the First Nations Peoples of the Americas.”
Two center board members, MaryAnn Robins (Onondaga) and Jess McPherson, are co-teaching F&M Reckoning with Lancaster courses alongside faculty. “We’re trying together to build a better understanding of our Indigenous history and our hopes and prospects for the future,” McPherson told the LOTI audience.
Meanwhile, other professors are adding to their courses content produced by or related to Indigenous people. “The whole idea is to refine the curriculum to include Indigenous studies,” explained Eric Hirsch, a Faculty Fellow who teaches and helps lead the project with Levine. “In a state where there are not federally recognized tribes, at F&M we’re working with Indigenous movements and community groups here who are swimming against the tide of (cultural) erasure.”
Find more information about Reckoning with Lancaster and the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference CONAM.
John W. Coleman
Courtesy Photo
John W. Coleman serves as Editor-at-Large for United Methodist Insight.