Students in professor Daniel Smith-Christopher’s summer course on Christianity and Native America got a much more personal experience with their subject matter than usual when they boarded a train at Union Station and spent the next six days traveling the Southwest.
During the trip, the undergraduates stopped at historic sites, and met and interviewed Native American tribal elders on the Tuba City and St. Michael’s reservations in Arizona.
Smith-Christopher said the course was intended to help students see first-hand not only the locations of contact between European settlers and native people in the Southwest, but the way their differing faiths interacted.
“This course especially focusses on that part of the contact – Christianity and Native America,” he said. “We are being honest about the horrific mistakes, but also honoring the contemporary Christian faith of many Southwest Native peoples. “
Asha Mollier, a junior majoring in Theological Studies, kept a detailed journal during the trip. She found that visiting the region and meeting with people offered her and the other students a far more intimate and instructive experience than would otherwise have been possible.
“The young students that we met were trying to embrace the Navajo ways and language, and also to be good Christians,” she said. “They shared those struggles with us, which is something you would never get in the classroom.”