Go to other villages and live the Gospel
by Marianne Arbogast
Ginny Doctor
considers herself "first and foremost, a missionary." Yet her understanding
of her role might surprise people who are accustomed to a more narrow definition
of the vocation.Doctor, a Mohawk Indian from New York who has lived in Alaska since 1993, sees her fundamental mission as "restoring the spirituality of the people."
"If people want to return to their traditional ways, which were the ways that God gave them years and years before the missionaries came, then that's what they should do, and that's what I tell people," says Doctor, who now serves as Special Assistant to the Bishop of Alaska, Mark MacDonald. "I'm not here to convert people to be Episcopalian, but to give people direction in their spiritual lives."
Doctor's own spiritual journey took her through a time of questioning the Christian faith in which she was raised, and to which she is now personally committed. Growing up on a reservation, Doctor was brought up in the Anglican tradition of her grandmother.
"I can trace my Anglican roots way back to the 1700s on my mom's side," she says. "My grandmother was a stalwart, steadfast Episcopalian, and because we're a matriarchal society, everybody did what Grandma said."
But when the birth of a new Indian consciousness called Christianity into question, Doctor was affected by the critique.
"Some harsh kinds of words were coming, like, you cannot be a Christian and an Indian at the same time. We were being called 'apples' -- red on the outside, white on the inside, because we were Christian. I was young at the time, and those words really struck me and really hurt me. And because I was very proud of my Indian heritage, I turned away from the church for a number of years because I wanted to find out what it meant to live the traditional way."
The effort was unfulfilling, Doctor reports, largely because she did not understand the language. Ultimately, it was her grandfather, who was not a Christian, who convinced her to return to the church.
"My grandfather was a traditional kind of holy person," she says. "He was a healer, and he knew all the songs and dances of the tradition. He never pushed any of his traditional beliefs on us, out of respect for my grandmother, because he knew that that was her role and that was her power, to make us what she wanted to make us."
Doctor should return to the church, her grandfather told her, because that was what she knew best. He explained that as long as she believed in God, it didn't really matter where she worshiped.
Doctor soon found herself on her parish vestry, and was asked to attend a national church conference.
"That became a life-changing experience," she says. "I thought we were the only Indian Episcopalians in the whole wide world. But at this convocation I met all kinds of Indian Episcopalians and became connected with them almost immediately. I could see that we carried some of the same things."
Doctor soon found herself deeply involved in the life of the national church. She has served on the National Committee on Indian Work, the Committee on the Status of Women and the Council for Women's Ministries.
In 1976, Doctor became executive director of the Urban Indian Center in Syracuse, a post she held for 17 years. It was her experience there that led her to missionary work.
"I began to see that we were operating a revolving door, that we were seeing the children of some of the children we had worked with," she says. "We saw them coming to the door again and again, because they had never healed the things in that family's life to help them move on. We filled lots of social and economic needs, but I came to the conclusion that the only way that we could really restore people was to restore the spirituality of the people that had been broken years and years ago. But it was difficult in that setting, because our funding would not allow us to work on those kinds of things."
Since childhood, Doctor had dreamed of going to Alaska. Her impasse at work, combined with the election of Steve Charleston, with whom she had worked on past projects, as Bishop of Alaska provided the impetus for her to make the move.
Doctor moved to Tanana, a remote, "fly-in" community on the north bank of the Yukon River, with a population of about 350 people, about 90 percent Athabascan Indian. Most are at least nominally Episcopalian.
"It's a river culture -- our lives are centered around the river and what the river brings, and where we can go on the river. It's a big fishing community and a place where people live off the land as much as they can. But like any Indian community -- or any non-Indian community, as far as that goes -- there are social problems. There is a constant battle with alcohol and drugs."
Though her work is based in the church, Doctor says that her main concern is not church attendance, but "whole and happy and healthy families. It doesn't make one bit of difference to me whether or not they come to church every Sunday. If they're off in the woods, doing something family-oriented, if they're up at fish camp putting up fish and the whole family is there and there isn't any alcohol, that's more important than coming to church."
Doctor was initially charged with helping to implement Charleston's vision of raising up ordained leaders in the villages. Her work in Tanana has resulted in the ordination of a local elder in February of this year. Doctor herself is also preparing for ordination.
With the election of Mark MacDonald as bishop, the focus shifted to discipleship, Doctor says. She explains that MacDonald believes "it's important to create circles of discipleship first, and then see what comes of that."
When Doctor is at the diocesan center in Fairbanks -- about 130 miles from Tanana -- she joins the diocesan staff in prayer and scripture study.
"We engage the Gospel on a daily basis. We reflect on it and see what the Gospel is calling us to do on that particular day, that particular time, whatever it is that we're involved in. In doing that we have noticed the Holy Spirit moving and have felt all kinds of changes in people."
In September, the diocese is planning to enlarge the circle at Vigil 2000, a major "gathering of disciples" at Fort Yukon. Doctor is the staff liaison to coordinate the event.
"We want to call people together to come and engage the Gospel in love and prayer -- people from the outside and people from Alaska," she says. "We'll come together and live our lives for three days in discipleship and see what God is calling us to do about many of the things that impact us as being Christian, and also as stewards of the planet."
Invitations have been sent far and wide -- to Alaskan Christians of all denominations, to people who have expressed interest in partnership with Alaska, to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Queen of England.
In addition to providing an opportunity for communal discernment, the vigil is intended to address "the need for healing and reconciliation," Doctor says.
"The native people lost something by the church's presence in Alaska," she says. "While the missionaries brought the Gospel to the native people, the people made a sacrifice. The sacrifice is now catching up to people, because of the loss of language and the loss of land. People began to lose their way of life, and that created all kinds of problems because the people were not whole, they were missing that spiritual element."
Doctor defines discipleship as a commitment "to not only engage the Gospel but live the Gospel. Whatever God is calling me to do after reflecting and engaging the Gospel, that is my charge, and I have to carry that out as far as I can. It's called me to go to other villages where I'm out of my comfort zone, where I have to live differently than I live here. Actually, it was hard to come here, too. I left my family, I left friends in New York. Last spring I went to Africa to help do some training of trainers [Women of Vision leadership training] and that was hard."
But her life is "very happy," Doctor says. "I think I've found a good balance in my life -- a spiritual, mental and physical balance. Tanana's not a place where you can just turn on the faucet and get water, where you can just turn up the thermostat and get heat. I chop wood and haul my water. But the physical work keeps me in balance. In doing what God has given you to do, even though it's hard, there's joy there."
Individual calls vary, Doctor believes.
"I think we can only do as much as God gives us to do. But God knows this, so for God it's okay. But God, I think, expects us to at least do something. I don't see it as being arduous. I think that the more people are equipped with the Gospel, the easier it gets. If you're sitting in the circle where there may be discussion about something difficult, and if Jesus is in the center -- if you've reflected on the Gospel -- then it's amazing what that Gospel can do to bring you to a good place with everything that's going on."