Book Review

We Survived the End of the World

Lessons from Native America

Steven Charleston, author of We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope (2023) is a member of the Choctaw Nation.

He has served as Episcopal bishop of Alaska, president and dean of the Episcopal Divinity School, and professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary.

He has a facebook page and is the author of several books. I reviewed his Four Vision Quests of Jesus in 2019.

If you haven’t yet read any of his books, I highly recommend you start! Check it out at a library or you can purchase at bookshop.org.

Purpose of this Book

This book, as Charleston writes, is not a history nor a biography.

Instead, he searches for how the Indigenous people of Turtle Island (North America), have survived 400 years of European colonization.

They survived. Even if only as a remnant of what once had been, they came through the nightmare to live another day. How?
That’s the question this book seeks to answer.
— Steven Charleston

We live in an age of community breakdown. Whether global or local, we can name our worries: wars, environmental disasters, increased economic stratification, all leading to the migration of people seeking better lives. Bullying, sexual harassment, and racist name-calling at schools and workplaces—in real life and digitally. Political polarization in national government, local city councils, churches, and school boards. Threats of violence against librarians and election workers. Covid19 and the long-term emotional and physical health issues.

Charleston asks, What can we learn from America’s Indigenous people that may not only help us to endure an apocalypse but, even more importantly, prevent one from happening.

Apocalypse

A Definition

Apocalypse comes from a Greek word which means to “uncover” or “reveal.”

It is used to describe a vision or revelation of the future. In the Book of Revelation, John of Patmos writes of the vision he had received of end times for his people.

Charleston uses apocalypse in this book to describe both:

  • a visionary revelation of what is to come and

  • an actual event of our worst fears already happening

Indigenous Experience

Various communities through the ages have experienced apocalypse. The end of the world for the Indigenous people began when the Europeans arrived on Turtle Island.

The Europeans brought diseases and wars. The U.S. government and settlers wanted land, made treaties, broke treaties, and forced Indigenous people off their ancestral land in death marches, such as the Trail of Tears. When white settlers killed Native Americans, they were never convicted, but Native Americans who killed a white person were executed.

Buffalo, the animal tribes relied on for food, were systematically slaughtered and left to rot. When settlers opened stores for purchase of food and supplies, Indigenous people were allowed to charge and when they could not pay, their land would be seized. Indigenous children were taken from their homes and placed in Christian boarding schools.

The Indigenous ways of worship, which included dancing, were made illegal.

a Universal Story

Just as many ancient cultures have a story about a great flood, the revelation of end times is also a universal story. We may also experience individual apocalypse, when the world as we know it has ended and we enter a new era, a new chapter in our lives.  

Process of Apocalypse

  • A prophet or prophets arise to warn their people of coming disaster, to suggest how it will happen and why.

  • The prophesied event occurs or fails to occur.

Prophets

Definition

Charleston expands beyond the dictionary definition of a person who speaks for the divine, a person inspired to teach about and proclaim the divine.

Prophets talk not only about the future but the past. They ground their prophecy in the bedrock spiritual traditions of their people, recalling ancient stories and covenant between divine and human. They reinterpret ancient teachings and remind people of old promises. Prophets are immersed in tradition even as they talk about how that tradition will need to change to meet a new challenge.

Native American prophets sprang not only from the culture of European colonialism but also from their much older context of Native American religious ritual and practice.

Purpose of prophets

Prophets do not arise out of a vacuum. They are part of
the apocalyptic process.
— Steven Charleston
  1. They appear first as an early warning system within any culture at risk… as herald of a vision of what is to come

  2. Then, as the apocalypse becomes ever more real, they serve as teachers to instruct people about what to do to end suffering and alter the course of destruction

  3. Finally, they are mystics who describe the future and guide people to find it within themselves.

Indigenous Prophets

Charleston devotes a chapter each to the lives of four Native American prophets, each one from a different region and a different era.

Ganiodaiio - born in 1735 into the Seneca Nation, their ancestral lands included the Finger Lakes in central New York and the Genessee Valley in western New York. The Seneca were one of six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, living under the Great Law of Peace. The U.S. and other nations built or role-modeled democratic governments on this Law.

The Revolutionary War was the beginning of their apocalypse.

Tenskwatawa - born in 1775 into the Shawnee Nation, their ancestral land included Ohio. He was ably assisted by his brother Tecumseh, and built a city, a light on a hill named Prophetstown.

Thomas Jefferson wanted the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River.

Smohalla - born into the Wanapams Nation, on their ancestral land of the Columbia Plateau in the Pacific Northwest, he was part of the Dreamers, and survived the Yakima War 1855-1858.

The west coast was desired by trappers and traders, settlers and miners, railroad magnates and commercial fishermen.

Wovoka - born sometime around 1856 into the Northern Paiute Nation, on their ancestral land now named Nevada. He was the prophet of the Ghost Dance, which spread throughout the Native tribes, including the Lakota tribe of the North Plains.

The Lakota people of Wounded Knee were massacred by machine-guns for dancing the Ghost Dance. Three days after, troops were sent to bury bodies of men and women, children and babies. No local clergy to prayers. The soldiers responsible received Congressional Medals of Honor.

Hopi Tribe - a small Native American community in the southwest desert, their name means the Peaceful Ones. They are the memory keepers of an unbroken line from the time of their long migration.

Analysis of Apocalypse

One of the most enduring and universal apocalyptic visions is the sacred community.

Places like Jerusalem, Mecca, or even Shangri-La take on apocalyptic significance. They exist between reality and revelation. They embody a hope and an ideal, the kingdom of God on earth. Even if they are not yet perfect, they are still living evidence that the vision of such perfection is possible. The city on the hill keeps hope alive.