[00:00:00] Chealsia: The Bible begins with a story of creation, of God speaking nature and animals into existence, of him forming humanity from the dust, crafted in his own image. God intentionally declares that all of creation was very good, and in that very good garden, God, humanity, and creation lived in harmony with one another.

[00:00:33] Randy Woodley: what we would call biblical shalom. This big picture of shalom.

This is how we’re supposed to live, and if we live this way, you know, the world would be a lot better place.

[00:00:42] Chealsia: That’s Indigenous author and activist Randy Woodley. In this episode, he helps you begin to reconnect with an Indigenous worldview and a way of life that is marked by the Hebrew word shalom, or harmony, the way of life that you were created for.

[00:01:03] Chealsia: Welcome to the Created For podcast, a space where our everyday lives intersect with God’s redemptive story. I’m your host, Chealsia Smedley.

Today, we have the honor of talking to Randy Woodley, who is an activist, an author, and a teacher of Cherokee descent. He has written numerous books, including Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview: A Decolonized Approach to Christian Doctrine, which I highly recommend, and Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth, which has also been shaping a lot of how I’ve been walking through the world in the last few weeks.

[00:01:40] Chealsia: He and his wife, Edith, co-sustain Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm and Seeds in Oregon. Today, we’re talking to Randy about how connecting to the Earth helps us all become more whole. Randy, thank you so much for being here.

[00:01:55] Randy Woodley: Thanks, Thanks. I’m glad to be here.

[00:01:57] Chealsia: Yeah. I’m glad that you’re here too.

Um, one thing that I would love to learn more about when reading your book, you invite people to reconnect with their own indigeneity. And so, I would love to hear a little bit about your story and how you connected with your Indigenous heritage.

[00:02:15] Randy Woodley: Right. Well, I was, uh, born in Cherokee country, and then we moved away at a very early age. My folks were both from a mixed-blood Cherokee descendancy and joined a community of people up in Michigan where we grew up, which was kind of during what they call the Great Migration.

Everybody was leaving the South and going to work for the automobile companies up in, uh, Michigan and Ohio and other places. And, yeah, so they hung out with people who were like themselves. I think probably half the people in our church were mixed blood, Shawnee or Creek or Choctaw or Cherokee, but they were all pretty assimilated. And I just kind of decided early on, I think in my before I was even a teenager, like, well, that’s not the kind of Indian I want to be.

[00:03:03] Chealsia: Hmm.

[00:03:03] Randy Woodley: And so, I figured out, you know, sort of like how to, how to get on track to be, uh, a non-assimilated Native person.

And, uh, took me years of trying to figure that out. And then, um, started following Jesus when I was 19. And then that was another whole dilemma because they told me, oh, don’t worry about all that stuff, you know, that’s, quote-unquote of the flesh. Just, you know…

[00:03:27] Chealsia: Your nativeness, you mean?

[00:03:28] Randy Woodley: Yes, exactly. Yeah, and so, I spent a couple years sort of in, uh, a misery trying to figure out, well, what does that mean?

And then finally I just kind of broke free of all that and, and, uh, a number of things kind of helped push me. But, um, yeah, I, I think it was just sort of realizing that, you know, Creator makes us who we are. We can’t help that, and we should actually be glad of that. and so, uh, it doesn’t diminish all my other bloodlines just to, to say, hey, this is what I relate to most as a Native person. But, yeah, but I’m proud of who I am, you know, from all sectors. I don’t think, uh, on the other side, all my ancestors are arguing about, hey, how should he relate? Or…

[00:04:16] Chealsia: Yeah.

[00:04:17] Randy Woodley: You know, who’s the most important or anything like that? I think we are, um, we are who we are and, and all of us come from a place of indigeneity, and that means basically living as a group with the earth and the community of creation. it’s just that the Western worldview has caused us all to forget that DNA that we have, and maybe it’s not too late. you know, I mean, we’re in a lot of trouble. Uh, the earth’s in a lot of trouble, but it’s mostly us who are in trouble.

Earth’s gonna be okay, I think, but, yeah, maybe we can all come back to our own indigeneity and live together in a good way. That’s what I’m hoping.

[00:04:57] Chealsia: Yeah, you said so many good things, but one thing that really, for me, has been standing out as I’ve been reading your work is this idea of the community of creation. and it seems like, duh, like God created the world. Creator, creation. But it’s something that I don’t think I’ve really thought about that much until now, and I can see how it’s transforming the way that I’m moving about like I’m trying to.

Go and listen to, to nature. I am taking bugs outta my house and being like, here you go. Like, go back outside.

So these little things that I think are really important as we think about where we find ourselves in this bigger story that God is writing.

And so, can you talk a little bit about the community of creation and our role in that community?

[00:05:51] Randy Woodley: Right. So we are all part of that, right? I mean, the project of colonialism is to make us think that there’s a particular way of relating and, sort of, it creates a false reality for us. And part of that false reality in our experience, where we are in time now, is to look at the things that Empire has built, the human-made things and all those kinds of things. They get our attention on all of those things. and the things that Creator has put there for us teach us, like the whole community of creation. That means everything, every plant, animal, rock, tree, et cetera, et cetera.

To look at those things with suspicion, to look at those things as if they are not part of us. Indigenous people never really went through that worldview change. So yeah, it’s, we’re all affected by colonialism. We’re all affected by the Western worldview, but not to the extent that the European nations were.

They embraced it and carried it with them when they came to this country. and so when we look at creation from an Indigenous worldview, we understand that we’re just a part of that, that circle. and that what we do to one thing affects everything. So, for example, I just saw a report this morning and about Florida coral reefs are dying because of the heat, which is caused by the greenhouse gases.

Well, 25% of all marine life has food based on the health of the coral reefs. So if our coral reefs die, at least 25%, probably more, because then there are other things that feed off of those, et cetera. We may not have fish to eat, and then we have to think about the phytoplankton and things like that, which create one-third of the world’s oxygen.

You know, if they die, what do we do? So, all of these things that are occurring right now as a result of climate change are affecting us, and if we don’t begin to see ourselves as part of that and, in partnership with the community of creation, our grandchildren, great-grandchildren, et cetera, may not have a world to live in.

[00:08:03] Chealsia: Yeah, it is really dire and, like, especially in this time right now with climate change. The things that you just shared, people are dying from heat, floods. And you hear these things, and it’s just devastating and overwhelming. And so one, how have you held on to hope, like you said earlier in this conversation, I think the earth is gonna be fine, you know, and I’m like, is it really like, how do you hold onto hope in the midst of all of these things happening?

[00:08:31] Randy Woodley: Yeah, so the hope is always a question people ask because, apparently, people are running out of it.

[00:08:38] Chealsia: Yeah.

[00:08:39] Randy Woodley: So they’re looking for ways to find hope. Well, if we don’t change our worldview, I don’t see any hope because it’s not just like moving this part here and that part there. We have to understand that it’s our whole worldview, this whole extractive mentality, colonial mentality, this mentality towards comfort as opposed to survival that are causing things to speed up so fast. That Western extractive colonial mentality that you can treat the earth and other people, who we would call the racial, cultural, genderized, other, as less than you, less than human. So then that justifies enslaving people, that justifies genocide, that justifies whatever, if we can dehumanize people to the point where we’re better.

And of course, that’s also roots of white supremacy and racism, uh, comes right from that. And that this goes all the way back to the problem of platonic thinking. This platonic dualism where we think that the ethereal world, the world of ideas, the world of the mind, the world of the spirit, if you will, if you’re religious, is privileged over the material world.

And that’s a split In the reality that Creator gave us to live in.

So, there has to be a real worldview change in order to make a difference. And so that’s why I write my books, I write the movies. I write songs, and I speak, and I basically tell people from the beginning my job is to convert you from a Western worldview, a destructive, failed experiment on earth, the Western worldview, and to convert you to a more Indigenous worldview to get you in touch with your own indigeneity.

That’s the task at hand. I said the Earth is gonna be okay because it will be because the Earth knows how to adapt. Creator puts in and builds in the systems a way to adapt. So nature’s always adapting. And what we’re experiencing right now is climate change is actually an adaptation.

Human beings whose sort of rightful place is a tertiary consumer of energy. That means sort of like a, a nibbler, right? So, like a goat goes around and takes a bite here and there. But since the industrial age, we’ve become the primary consumers, and we’re not supposed to be. And so the Earth doesn’t like that.

The earth is built in then to reject the ones who are taking more than their share. And so I think in the long run, like when I say the Earth’s gonna be okay, but we may not be here to be co-sustainers and have the privilege of maintaining and keeping the earth, in a good way as a human species. So, how do you have hope in that kind of a situation?

There’s a lot of things happening right now. I see older people and younger people looking for a different way to see the world. I am particularly, uh, excited about the, you know, millennial and Gen Z generations who have said, we don’t want our parents’ paradigm. We don’t want your pollution. We don’t want your racism, we don’t want your homophobia, we don’t want the kinds of things that you all developed out of fear, and out of carelessness, and out of greed. We want community, and we want to be active in the world, and we want to make sure that we live in a good place. And so, that gives me a lot of hope.

Their activism also gives me a lot of hope. You know, I talked to older people as well, and they’re all saying, well, we gotta do something different. You know, they’re like old enough to know practically we gotta change. And making a worldview change isn’t impossible. It can be done, but it, you know, it takes some work.

[00:12:14] Chealsia: Yeah, can you share a little bit more about how this Western worldview creates these divides that you were talking about or these splits?

[00:12:23] Randy Woodley: Yeah, so the Western world puts everything on beliefs…

[00:12:26] Chealsia: Hmm.

[00:12:27] Randy Woodley: rather than actions. And that’s part, part of that dualism. And so it’s all about correct beliefs. And so Europe developed this, this incubator where beliefs were, you know, orthodoxy. For example, in the Christian Church, was everything. And what you believe meant everything. And so if you didn’t believe the same in us, we might kill you over it. In fact, lots of people did kill each other over it. And there were lots of religious wars in Europe, but there was never a religious war in the, in Turtle Island here in America before settlers came in because Native people didn’t have that false sense of reality. They didn’t have the idea that, oh, your beliefs are more important than your actions. No, your actions and your beliefs have to be congruent. And I think that’s pretty much what Jesus taught.

[00:13:16] Chealsia: Yeah.

[00:13:17] Randy Woodley: So, um, so I think we’re pretty safe there.

Musical Break

[00:13:21] Chealsia: Can you share a little bit about the harmony way and what an Indigenous worldview would look like? What that shift would look like?

[00:13:38] Randy Woodley: Yeah. So, my PhD work was a degree in intercultural studies, and I set out to sort of look at something that I knew we had in our own Cherokee culture. It’s called Eloheh, or sometimes it’s called Duyukti. So it’s right way of living, and everything’s good: it’s in balance; it’s in harmony. There’s no war. People aren’t hungry. The earth is producing what it should, et cetera. And to see like how many of our tribal peoples across the US and Canada had that construct, um, this harmony way construct. And as it turned out, all 45 tribes plus the dozen elders I interviewed, spiritual leaders, all knew what I was talking about immediately.

Everybody has it. And, and then I come to find out that, you know, people, who I was going to school with from, Maasai from Kenya and Samburu, and South Africans, uh, Zulu and uh, Aboriginals in Australia and Maori and New Zealand and other people across the world. I’ve come to find more and more all have this sort of harmony way structure is a sort of foundation for their beliefs and how we’re supposed to live. And that, that harmony way, has particular values that go with it. So values like respect and values, like, you know, everybody has a voice. like consensus and values like generosity and all those kinds of things.

And I found basically ten values in my research that, that were, parallel to what we would call biblical shalom. This big picture of shalom. And, then out of that, I wrote the book Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision to, to say like this is Creator’s original instructions. This is how we’re supposed to live, and if we live this way, you know, the world would be a lot better place. The problem is with the West, and especially in America because America is sort of born to fight. We are war. Uh, some people say we’re a war society, but others have, America is war itself.

I mean, we’ve, we’ve been at war for so long and with so many different peoples around the world, with the idea, like, like you, you have to solve things through violence. And it’s very much in our theologies as well. This sense of violence causes people to think, oh, well, they’re living in this kind of stuff is utopianism, this is, you know, some otherworldly thing or, you know? No, this is how we’re actually supposed to live, but we’re so far removed from it.

And so, um, we need to all get back to living in our own sort of harmony ways, and if we don’t have them or know them, take on the values of the Indigenous people around you, um, who do still, often live by that. Now, we’re Indigenous people aren’t immune to colonialism or anything else. We’re part of the problem as well. And so we’re, we’re having to, what we call re-indigenize, right? To come back to our original values and our original ways of living.

[00:16:36] Chealsia: Yeah, it’s so, it’s so interesting and cool to learn this because I feel like the ways that, you know, in media and the ways that Indigenous people have been portrayed, I would never know this, like, this like western world view of like tribes fighting each other, like that has been the Western idea, right? The idea of savagery and all…

[00:16:57] Randy Woodley: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:58] Chealsia: that are lies.

[00:17:00] Randy Woodley: We actually have lots of strategies for peacemaking. Much more, you know, than making war. I mean, uh, Native people are good at making war, too, but they’d all much rather live in peace. And we have very complex peacemaking strategies, a lot of which need to be picked up by our government, and learn to live together because, you know, it’s better for everybody.

You can’t have trade if you’re at war, and people can’t feel safe to go out and, but they left that part out of the Hollywood movies and the books that have been written about Indigenous peoples intentionally. You know, you’re not supposed to learn about that stuff. You’re just supposed to learn how savage we were and, you know, how we deserve basically to have the land taken from us. And so that’s intentional that, that, that was left out.

[00:17:44] Chealsia: Yeah, and then when you’re talking about these values, it really does sound like the Jesus way as well.

[00:17:51] Randy Woodley: Absolutely.

[00:17:52] Chealsia: And so I’m curious, is there like a story or a passage from scripture that has made this even come more alive for you?

[00:17:58] Randy Woodley: Well, first of all, I think, you know, we have to understand that Jesus was not a product of the Enlightenment. He was actually under extreme pressure to be colonized. Rome is one of the biggest, you know, colonizers that ever hit the planet, but he didn’t succumb to that. And so he’s a great example of a decolonized mind and a decolonized life. But I think if we look at Jesus as sort of the example who, uh, lived a life of vulnerability, who showed us how vulnerable God is, who talked about plants and talked about trees and talked about seed and talked about animals, and talked about birds, and talked about flowers and, you know, all of those kinds of things.

They had all kinds of sophisticated technology in those days. Uh, they had waterways, aqueducts, they had chariots, they had crossbows, but he didn’t talk about those things. He talked about the things Creator put there and how those are supposed to teach us. So, I think the first thing we have to understand is that, that Jesus was an indigenous guy. That should help move us if we’re a follower of Jesus; that should help move us toward a more indigenous way of thinking and living. But you think about any of the stories that he told, Luke 4, when he makes his announcement, who he is, and all the things that lead up to that are great. You know, I don’t have time to do a Bible study here, but, but, but if you just go, the first four chapters of Luke are just incredible. Uh, sort of set the stage for, like, what’s life supposed to be like in this new reality?

And, uh, and he gets, you know, and he talks about, you know, the, the Old Testament, uh, laws of Shalom and Jubilee and all those kinds of things are all inferred in his speech. And he’s saying now they’re being fulfilled. So if you follow me, you follow Shalom. You follow Jubilee. You follow the sabbath. You understand these things as part of human existence, and so this affects us not just personally, but also in how we vote, and what we lobby for, uh, all of those kinds of things. All moving towards a society based on what the Hebrews called Shalom, what we would call eloheh, what the others, you know, in different tribes would call different things. But all of those things basically equal this harmony way that we’re talking about. And then he, he answers the question of, like, was it just for us, you know? This ethnocentrism that was there, like, we call it American exceptionalism. That’s what it’s called in our country.

But, you know, then he talks about there were lots of widows in Israel who were starving and, and God sends Elijah to this one, a widow of Zarapeth, you know, foreigner. And then he even talks about, uh, lots of lepers in Israel. But God sends Elisha to this guy Naaman, who’s actually a Syrian occupier of Israel at the time. Right? So he’s, is the oppressor, and here’s that whole loving your enemy thing, right? And he heals him, and they want to kill him because of it. But he’s saying, no, this is for everybody. This way of living is for everybody, not just us. It’s for all of us.

[00:21:07] Chealsia: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That’s really good. and so, how do we begin to adopt this way of living? Can you maybe give us one or two ways that we can start?

[00:21:21] Randy Woodley: Well, I can give you a hundred ways.

[00:21:23] Chealsia: Yeah,

[00:21:26] Randy Woodley: Uh, and I did. So yeah.

[00:21:30] Chealsia: I have it here.

[00:21:31] Randy Woodley: Yeah, in this book, Becoming Rooted, I wrote that as sort of like a way for people to go, well, where do I get started? You know? And, and I’m, and I wrote a hundred, and it was hard to come up with a hundred, but, um, uh, I got 60 done and I, I went like, oh my gosh, that’s all I’ve got, you know? And for about two weeks, I hit this wall, and then my wife started talking to me, go, well, did you write about this? Did you write about the, you know? And I’m like, no. 

[00:21:58] Chealsia: Without thinking.

[00:21:59] Randy Woodley: Yeah, and then basically at the end of each short little vignette is a little admonition, a one-sentence or two-sentence admonition, like, go do this.

Right? That relates to the thing that, that I was talking about. I wanted to have something that I could kind, like walk beside people in their own lives and make it practical and so, and to break up that dualism, right? So, and every, almost every one of those things has to do with going outside.

Go outside and do this.

Go outside and recognize a different relative than you had before in the animal world or the insect world, or the plant world, But they all have to do with like getting out into creation and realizing that creation is our longest-lasting and most deepest teacher out there for us to learn from. I mean, this is, this is part of why Creator puts nature there. and again, the more we’re, we’re out there, we realize we’re actually a part of it, not separate from it, right? We shouldn’t feel like creation or nature is alien to us. We should feel like it’s part of us, and that includes the harsh realities of it, as well as the beauty of it. So it’s all part of, of life.

[00:23:09] Chealsia: Yeah. So we’ll definitely tell people to read the book and and to journey along with you. I’ve been journeying along with you for about 30 days now, and it’s been really great.

[00:23:18] Randy Woodley: Thank you.

[00:23:19] Chealsia: Yeah, I’ve really enjoyed it and I’ve been telling my friends to, you know, my, my roommate is like, what are you doing?

Are you just sitting outside and looking at a tree? It’s like, yeah, that’s what Randy told me to do. So for, for our audience though, like, who’s maybe listening to this and saying like, okay, go outside and learn from creation. Huh? What does that look like?

[00:23:40] Randy Woodley: So, it looks natural but seems unnatural, right? I used to teach a course called Theology and Ethic of the Land, and we would make it part of our journey to go to a forest, to go to a, the ocean, and different things like this. But one of the, the first exercises I would have them do is to go out without their cell phones, and just sit somewhere isolated, alone for an hour. And you know, first time I did that, I was like, well, what if nobody comes back with any stories to tell or anything like that, you know? Well, um, and everybody sort of like has the same experience.

It’s like 15, 20 minutes of settling in, maybe 30 minutes of settling in, and then all of a sudden, they take notice of something that’s going on that they hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it’s an ant, maybe it’s a leaf, maybe it’s the water. But every single time I’ve done that, people come back with these experiences that are incredible. And so we just have to give ourselves time to resettle ourselves back into the community of creation to which we belong and realize that we’re a part of it.

[00:24:51] Chealsia: Yeah, yeah, That’s really profound. Even just the, the stillness and the patience of it saying, okay, just, you’re there.You’re reorienting yourself. It might feel uncomfortable, but this is like what you’re supposed to be. This is what is natural.

[00:25:09] Randy Woodley: Yeah, yeah.

[00:25:10] Chealsia: That isn’t natural.

[00:25:12] Randy Woodley: And it’s addictive. I mean, people who start doing this go like, oh my gosh, you know, I do this all the time now. It’s like, you know, I’d go out and I, I spend weekends out, and I do, you know, other things and yeah, and, uh, I mean, this, this is, we, we’ve created this facade. Uh, you know, it’s good. I mean, I like houses and you know, I like having an indoor toilet, you know, that works. And I like having water at my, you know, there’s a lot of convenience that that we have that we’re we like, but, but all those are things that we have created, that human beings have created and we can start thinking like we are the end

all, the sum all of everything. By just being isolated in urban centers and buildings and, and uh, when we get out there, we realize, oh, that false sense of control is, is what’s driving me. No wonder I feel so insecure. I’m not in control.

[00:26:06] Chealsia: Right.

[00:26:07] Randy Woodley: We cannot win fighting against nature. And so the best thing to do is succumb, give up, and go, I’m a part of this. What’s my role to play? And as human beings, our main role, the, our foundational job, is to tend the garden or to take care of things and, and to whenever things are out of harmony. To bring them back in. That’s our role. Um, whether that means legislatively or being personally involved or whatever it means. And it doesn’t just mean like, although it’s important to, like, heal the waters, to heal the ocean, to heal the earth. But it also means, like, missing murdered Indigenous women. Or bringing clean water to people, uh, in their, in urban centers like Flint, Michigan, or, you know, it can mean any of those things where things are out of harmony.

Our job as human beings is to bring them back in.

I look at Jesus as sort of like the way you’re supposed to live your life, and, uh, it was both public and private. It was caring about not just other people deeply and especially the most disenfranchised and marginalized in societies, but providing safety nets for them and creating a, a world that, we all can flourish in.

[00:27:20] Chealsia: Randy encourages us to follow Jesus’ example as we live out our original purpose, which is to be peacemakers or to be people who restore harmony with God wherever it’s been lost. I know that can feel like a big calling, so here are some places to start from today’s episode.

Explore an Indigenous worldview and reconnect with the community of creation by going outside and learning from nature, our oldest and deepest teacher. You could also think about the ways the Western worldview has been destructive in your own life and pray for God to speak to you and help you to become more connected with the reality that he gave us to live in.

Overall, this conversation gave me a lot of hope, as together we seek to live in wholeness and harmony with God, and as we be and become exactly who we were created to be.

Thanks for listening to the Created For podcast. For more ways to continue journeying with us, hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Check out the show notes for any links we mentioned, and go to cru.org/createdfor for a guided reflection based on this episode.