Wiconi International I first heard Richard Twiss speak at a center for world missions a few years ago. With flowing dark hair and an impressive bearing, this pioneering Lakota scholar, missionary, and follower of the “Jesus Way” shared with us his journey as a First Nations believer, how our cultural perceptions can affect the way […]
The dancers leapt, reached, and whirled on stage to the rhythm of percussion and a live reading of Langston Hughes’s poem “Drums.” Moving and acting in harmony with each other, they brought to life their heritage—the dances of Africa, the billowing sails of the slave ships, the music and color of New Orleans, the heart-tugging […]
Hello, dear reader friends. If you’ve read my blog much, you probably know a little about how the Lord has been teaching me about racial reconciliation and the often-tragic history of our country in relation to the first peoples of America. I’d just like to share with you an opportunity to raise our voices […]
Read Part 1 here. When we reached the Window Rock monument, I climbed out of the car to follow my Navajo host, while his wife stayed in the car to write an anniversary card for their son and his wife. The two of us surveyed the Code Talker memorial, where he showed me the […]
The warm desert wind whipped my hair across my face and snapped the flags above me, flags of New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and the Navajo Nation waving beside the Stars and Stripes. I gazed up at the towering red rocks, the round hole to the clear blue sky, above the Window Rock Veterans Memorial. Below […]
Last year I posted that I didn’t know what to think of Columbus Day anymore.This year I wanted to share this short video, made by a Navajo man seeking to further reconciliation and understanding between the native and immigrant peoples of our land today. And again this Columbus Day I want to say it: thank […]
When one of my critique partners recommended The Yada Yada Prayer Group to me, I expected it would be good. But I didn’t know I’d fall in love with it by Chapter 2. I’d never read a novel quite like it. In some ways the story reminds me of my critique group: a group of […]
I went to a powwow last Saturday. Odd that after living five years near the largest Native American tribe in the country, it took moving back to California to get me to a powwow. But one is held quite near us here, sponsored by Christian Native Americans, though many vendors and participants are not believers. […]
It was a Sunday near Martin Luther King Jr. day, my senior year of college, and I was visiting a church I had never attended before with two of my roommates. Near the close of the service, we sang a stirring and unfamiliar song. At the bottom of the music, I read, “African-American National Anthem.” […]
In a recent discussion on the American Christian Fiction Writers email loop, various writers shared how music intertwined with their writing. Some listen for inspiration but must write to silence, while others have certain music for different stories that helps them get into the setting and characters as they write. I am rather a mixture […]
