All these symbols came from people who were deacons and lay leaders with ministerial education, not the white missionary personnel, said Hatcher. This comes from the Lakota people themselves. They are the ones who have the control and make the proposals and enter into dialogue with the bishop. There is a tendency, he noted, for others on the reservations to view the parish as a European church, but it s a Catholic Lakota community, he emphasized. Sometimes the use of traditional Lakota rites upsets some Catholics.
White missionaries have no business using native symbols.
But if the Lakota are doing it, that s another thing. Each tribe has a different approach, Hatcher said. You have to be very sensitive to where the local leadership is on these various issues. Through workshops and an annual conference, Kateri Mitchell, director of the National Tekakwitha Conference in Great Falls, Mont., works at helping American Indian Catholics reassert their native identities in worship. Mitchell is a Catholic nun and a Mohawk Indian.